Article written by Richard Cowan, former NORML National Director and author of We Know Too Much About Marijuana for It To Be Illegal.
Unless the elected officials of Nebraska can stop the people who elected them, the people will almost certainly vote for an initiative on the November ballot legalizing medical marijuana in the state. Nationally, almost 95% of Americans support medical marijuana.
Absurdly, Nebraska’s Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts has done everything he could to suppress the will of the people. Now he is saying, “There is no such thing as medical marijuana.”
Ricketts added, “This is not something that would be prescribed by a doctor. It’s not going to be distributed through a pharmacy. These are dispensaries that would be in your communities.”
Now consider that over-the-counter NSAID drugs like aspirin and Acetaminophen (Tylenol) NSAID drugs hospitalize over 100,000 people and kill 16,500 in the US each year.
Marijuana has no lethal dose.
Also, in the year 2020, “a total of 33 states, District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands have approved comprehensive, publicly available medical marijuana/cannabis programs.”
RELATED: Mixing Alcohol & Cannabis (CBD/THC)
Ricketts also claimed that in other states where it has been legalized, people show up to work “stoned” and are at greater risk for accidents on the job.
Rather silly, but remember again, this is a medical access initiative, not about “Legalization.” Bait and switch.
Similarly, Ricketts has claimed that in Colorado marijuana related automobile accidents increased —- after Legalization, but this is a medical access initiative, and the numbers he cites did not apply to medical use. (And there are a number of problems with that data.)
In 2019 Nebraska had 1542 “Alcohol-Related Crashes”. It is important to note that this number has decreased from 1822 in 2011, but should alcohol be banned in Nebraska?
Of course not. The US has reduced drunk driving fatalities by a third over the last thirty years by educating the public about the dangers of drunk driving. Even so almost 30 people in the United States die in drunk-driving crashes — that’s more than 10,000 lives per year.
“Nebraska classifies marijuana as a “Schedule I” controlled substance, putting it in the same category of drugs as cocaine and methamphetamine.
Great for “Drug Education.” Yes, children coke and meth are the same as marijuana??
In Nebraska in 2018, there were almost 8,800 marijuana arrests, the vast majority of which were for possession, and marijuana possession arrests accounted for almost half of all Nebraska drug arrests.
SEE: Should We Legalize Something That Causes 300K ER Visits Every Year?
Of course, Black people were three times more likely than white people to be arrested for marijuana possession in Nebraska even though Black and white people use marijuana at similar rates.
But now let me quote something that Ricketts said that I agree with.
“On Memorial Day, we pause to remember the heroes who’ve made sacrifices to protect the freedoms we enjoy. Their memory lives on and won’t ever be forgotten.”
Of course that doesn’t apply to disabled veterans who may need medical marijuana.
However, in fairness to Ricketts, if I worked for him I would probably go to work “stoned”.
