Project Propaganda: SAM’s Real Agenda

Our friends over at High Times recently put out an article detailing some of the glowing orbs of shit that Project SAM is disseminating. It got me thinking about their true motives, not the BS soundbite motives they polish and put on Twitter.

They show up in suits, tout their academic and professional pedigrees, and claim to speak with the authority and backing of conventional medical wisdom. It reminds me of an adolescent boy who sprays on entirely too much cologne, doing his damndest to exude an air of maturity and experience. Project SAM, freshly spritzed with “Legitimacy by Calvin Klein,” has all the superficial trappings of a respected, established organization. They look sharp in press conferences, they make appearances on popular TV shows and try to pull off the guise of being a reasonable, caring group.

I am absolutely dumbfounded that they can step up to a podium and spit this dreck without so much as a grin or the slightest hint of moral reservation. These guys should be in Hollywood (or perhaps a sociopath’s therapy circle).

They have the nerve to put this on their website…

We at SAM:

•    believe in an approach that neither legalizes, nor demonizes, marijuana.

•    reject dichotomies — such as “incarceration versus legalization” — that offer only simplistic solutions to the highly complex problems stemming from marijuana use and the policies surrounding it.

•   champion smart policies that decrease marijuana use — and do not harm marijuana users and low-level dealers with arrest records that stigmatize them for life and in ways that make it even harder for them to break free from cycles of substance dependence.

…while saying this in public, “[M]arijuana use directly contributes to mental illness, depression, psychosis, permanent loss of IQ and memory, heightened risk of heart attack or stroke, school drop out…”

These anachronistic claims have either proved to be unsubstantiated or blatantly false. They also want to “champion smart policies that decrease marijuana use.” Why? Do they ever say a legitimate, provable reason for why they want to decrease marijuana use? Even in the alcohol realm, there are organizations that want to stop underage drinking, drunk driving, etc. But do you ever see a blanket campaign to decrease alcohol use in general? The imbalanced hypocrisy really makes it hard to take these chumps seriously.

Even if I believed that these seemingly benign statements were the only driving motivators at play with Project SAM (I don’t), the inherent flaw in their thinking is that they refuse to budge from a position of “marijuana is bad and we have better ways to help you stop using it.” They are completely neglecting the possibility that cannabis can be seen as part of a healthy lifestyle; that perfectly functioning, tax-paying businesspeople, parents, professors, etc make a conscious, deliberate choice to use cannabis. SAM just ignores this part of the cannabis demographic because it’s not aligned with their smear campaign.

SAM calls for the following regarding cannabis-based medicines:

• The rapid expansion of research into the components of the marijuana plant for delivery via non-smoked forms.

• The establishment of an emergency or research FDA IND program that allows seriously ill patients to obtain non-smoked components of marijuana before final FDA approval.

• The end of “cannabis clubs” and so-called “dispensaries” that are fronts for marijuana stores and do not follow appropriate standards of medical care.”

Again, they are feigning acceptance of medical marijuana, but only leave allowances for non-smoked cannabis. I can tell you as a medical marijuana patient that if I was permitted to only eat/ingest cannabis instead of smoking it, I would not be able to get the relief I need. At the very least, I would have to consume much more cannabis and wait much longer for the effects to propagate.

Not to mention that I think the risk of accidental use and improper titration are much, much greater with edibles. If a 5-year old picked up pot bud and tried to eat it, they would likely either spit it out as it’s not too tasty or they would have a hard time chewing/swallowing it. Also, they may not even put it in their mouth. However, if a edibles are left about that look, taste, and smell like regular food (usually tasty food!), a child might eat it without a second thought.

Also, Project SAM is really driving hard at ending dispensaries, calling them “fronts” for cannabis stores who “do not follow appropriate standards of medical care.” Is it “appropriate” to allow countless people to suffer and take risky pharmaceuticals? How “appropriate” is it to condemn the depressed and anxious among us to ineffective, lab-created anti-depressants? Which part of the Hippocratic Oath says that? I’d also like to point out that a teenager (or younger) can walk into any grocery store or Walgreens in the country and buy bottles and bottles of legal, OTC pills that could kill them in one use (take enough Tylenol and that will be the last back ache of your life) but Project SAM is hung up on the distinction between smoked and non-smoked cannabis? What a stellar use of resources! Though, if I was ankle-deep in manure like SAM, I might be scrounging for a talking point, too.

The only thing I can think of is that Kennedy (pissed he missed the chance to smoke pot as a kid and wants the rest of us to be as dull as him), Sabet (renowned oracle of specious data and my personal favorite Prohibition Backstreet Boy) and the rest of the Project SAM d-nozzles have to be working for Big Pharma, Big Rehab, or Big Prison–maybe all three. Their “facts” truly are a Goebbles-esque string of propagandist reefer madness fodder. Where were these “smart approaches to marijuana” when the prisons were overflowing with non-violent pot users? It’s curious that SAM only sprung to life when cannabis looked poised to lighten the coffers of the alcohol/prison/rehab/pharma crowd.

Dress it up with as many skewed blog posts and as much “world-is-flat” science as you like, Project SAM. You’re still just the same tired old prohibitionists who can’t accept that you lost the fucking drug war. I just hope your funders kept the receipt. I’d want my money back after the faceplant that surely awaits you.