Reading Eagle Editorial Board Spouts Reefer Madness
The editorial staff of the Reading Eagle must be smoking the most mind-crippling substance around. Somewhere, somehow, they got too big of a whiff of the old reefer madness.
The editorial board wrote an editorial that they published on May 22, 2017 called: “Editorial: Marijuana legalization wrong, regardless of poll results”
The Issue: A recent survey finds more than half of Pennsylvanians support allowing recreational use of pot.
Our Opinion: Changing the state’s policy on this issue would be bad for public health.”
The editors of the Reading Eagle do not believe that just because the majority of people want legalization that we should have legalization. They opened up their editorial with:
“While a recent poll found increasing support in Pennsylvania for legalizing the recreational use of marijuana, we urge legislators to hold their ground on this issue and avoid a knee-jerk reaction that they could very well regret. According to a Franklin & Marshall College poll, 56 percent of registered voters favor legalization, marking the first time the survey has found more than half of Pennsylvanians take that view. In 2006, just 22 percent favored legalization.”
Knee-jerk reaction? I’ll tell you what a knee-jerk reaction is – making this stuff illegal in the first place. In 1846 Dr. Isaac Hiester cured a man named Charles Sassaman of lock-jaw with cannabis in Reading. By the 1850’s cannabis was sold in the pharmacies of Reading. In 1865 famous Reading resident Herman Strecker wrote about his use of hashish for medicine and rebuked those who stuck their nose in his business for doing so and called them asses.
Cannabis was used in Reading up until the 1920’s. That’s when Mexicans started flocking to Reading to work in their industrial plants. A local Reading police officer was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. He hated these new arrivals. They brought cannabis with them. On the streets of Reading one day Officer Knopp arrested a Mexican man who resisted and slashed him across the face. Knopp blamed it on “marihuana”.
In November of 1932 a Berks County man from West Lawn named Chester A. Mohn was elected as a freshman state representative and took office in January of 1933. He had heard the story of Knopp’s altercation with the Mexican man on Penn Street and introduced a bill to make “marihuana” illegal in March of 1933.
There was very little debate. The newspapers were printing reefer-madness hysteria. It was a slam dunk. It took about two months to pass it. The bill was signed into law by prohibitionist Governor Gifford Pinchot on May 22, 1933 and went into effect on September 1, 1933. All because of a story he heard about in Reading. Now THAT’S a knee-jerk reaction.
The editors went on to write:
“We recognize that this poll result is part of a national trend of changing views on the subject, but we remain strongly opposed to legalization. Our state does not need to make it easier for people to obtain this potentially addictive, mind-altering substance. Mainstream medical organizations including the American Medical Association, American Academy of Pediatrics and American Psychiatric Association still oppose legalization because it represents a danger to public health.”
Make it easier to obtain? Seriously? Do they not know how easy it is to get now? A danger to public health? I’ll tell you what’s a danger to public health – putting people in jail for association with a plant.
They continued:
“Marijuana is a mood-altering drug capable of producing dependency,” the American Society of Addiction Medicine wrote. “While popularly thought to be a fairly benign ‘drug,’ marijuana can have adverse effects on memory and learning, perception, behavior and functioning, and on pregnancy.”
The editors are dependent themselves. They are dependent on lies and lunacy. They thought that reefer-madness was benign, not realizing the negative effects on their memory, learning, perception, behavior and functioning. They have no memory, no knowledge of history. Their perception is way off.
The institutionalized ignorance continued with:
“We are quite familiar with the argument that if liquor is legal, marijuana should be as well. We disagree. Our culture struggles to deal with the ill effects caused by alcohol abuse and drunken driving as it is. Putting another addictive, mind-altering substance on the market will only make matters worse. We are particularly concerned about the possibility of more minors trying the drug once it’s legalized.”
Putting another substance on the market? The whole reason journalists exist is to uncover the news, to investigate, to report on what is going on, to know the community. Yet they so blindly have failed to pick up on the fact that cannabis is everywhere and always has been. It’s been a rite of passage in our culture for a couple generations and is firmly entrenched part of our American culture. It’s always been here, still is and it’s never going away. Ever.
Those minors. Always concerned with those minors. Oh no, what if they smoke pot! Horrors! Do they not even know that kids have been smoking pot for over 80 years? They ought to know, they’ve been telling us for over 80 years. That’s why they banned it in the first place back in the 30’s, because kids were getting it on the school ground. Then the 40’s came and they were alarmed because the kids were smoking it. Then the 50’s came, rock and roll happened and the authorities were alarmed that more kids were smoking it than ever. Then came the 60’s and we all know what happened in the 60’s. They said they had an epidemic of kids smoking cannabis. Then the 70’s came and they said more kids were smoking it than ever. I graduated in 1984 and half my class smoke or tried pot. I knew people that graduated in the 90’s and they told me there was plenty of pot in high school.
Now they think that if we legalized cannabis, taxed it and regulated it, set the age at 21 and strictly enforced it, somehow THAT’S going to get kids smoking it. This kind of foolish idiocy hurts us all. The kids are smoking it now and always have because the reefer-madness fools don’t want to regulate it.
They continued:
“The results in Colorado since marijuana was legalized there suggest supporters should have second thoughts. According to the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, Colorado now leads the country in past-month marijuana use by youth, and states with legal marijuana are experiencing higher rates of traffic deaths from driving while high and more marijuana-related poisonings and hospitalizations. And the group reports that the black market for marijuana remains strong even in places where the drug can be purchased legally.”
Their first mistake was trusting anything put out by “Smart Approaches to Marijuana”. Just because something says “smart” doesn’t make it so.
Anytime I go somewhere out of state and I see a place selling “authentic Philly cheesesteaks” I know it’s not going to be authentic. When the guru tells you he is wise, run from the guru. When someone tells you “I’m smart, I have a very good brain,” that’s when you know you are listening to a blathering pretentious fool.
Don’t ask Smart Approaches. Ask Governor Hickenlooper. Here’s what he told The Cannabis a few months back:
“We haven’t seen a spike in teenage use. We haven’t seen a giant increase in people’s consumption of marijuana. Seems like the people who were using marijuana before it was legal, still are. Seems like the people who weren’t using marijuana before it was legal, still aren’t.”
Hickenlooper continued:
“I don’t think there’s much question the old system was a disaster. We sent hundreds of thousands — millions — on a nationwide basis, millions of kids to jail for non-violent crimes. We inducted them into a high probability of a lifetime of crime, strictly by sending them to prison for something that was a non-violent crime. This new system, where we may not be completely sure of (whether) we’ve solved all the problems and that we’re going to be successful in this grand experiment, it does offer certain advantages to the status quo of the previous system. Now we have tax revenues.
Some people complain about the black market, “You’ve got this black market, this large black market. How do you address that?” Well, you know five years ago, it was a huge black market. Everything was black market, right? It was all illegal. Everything was being paid in cash and under the table. At least now we have some tax revenues that we can use to market to teenagers and make sure they understand that they could lose permanently a piece of their long-term memory.
Almost every brain doctor I’ve talked to feels there’s a very high probability — if your brain is still rapidly growing during your teenage years … there’s a high probability, it’s more than just risk, you’ll lose a sliver of your long-term memory every time you smoke this high-THC marijuana. Most kids don’t realize that. But we now have money we can advertise for that. We can provide more money to public safety to crack down on this gray market that turns into a black market. Each year we’re changing the regulatory structure to make it I think a little better.”
The Eagle editorial board seemed confused. They wrote:
“Furthermore, until we have a national consensus on how to deal with this issue, there is going to be a serious challenge. With the White House and Justice Department looking to take a tougher approach to drug enforcement, having conflicting federal and state laws concerning marijuana is bound to cause problems and considerable confusion.”
There doesn’t have to be confusion. The states are moving forward on legalization and the people have already reached a national consensus. All scientific national polls show that the American people favor legalization of cannabis. Now the elected representatives need to catch up to the people. What’s confusing about that?
The Reading Eagle seems unable to follow the madness of their position to its logical conclusion. They write:
“Just because we don’t favor legalization of recreational use does not mean we believe in filling our jails with people charged with marijuana offenses. People caught with small amounts of the drug should not face harsh punishment. When it comes to the issue of drug use and abuse, treatment-based solutions are far preferable to mass incarceration.”
Wow, how generous they think they are by saying those charged with possession should not get jail. They think anyone caught with cannabis needs TREATMENT. No. Absolutely not. Someone needs to sit down with them and explain to them that the earth is not flat, science has advanced in leaps and bounds since Medieval days and that we know so much more now than we did in the 1930’s. Cannabis consumers don’t need treatment they need FREEDOM!
Look, if someone really thinks they have a problem with smoking too much cannabis, or if they have a problem with any drug, then by all means get treatment. The vast majority of people who get caught with cannabis don’t need treatment. We can’t afford it anyway. The state has a 3 ½ billion dollar structural deficit. We arrest 20,000 people a year for possession of cannabis in Pa. Where are we going to get the money to treat 20,000 cannabis users a year? No, really, think about it.
Now, if you are REALLY concerned with funding rehabilitation of people addicted to hard drugs I’ll tell you how to do it – legalize, tax and regulate cannabis! You’ve got to be really thick-headed in 2017 to not be able to see the clear answer sparkling right in front of your eyes. We’ll make 500 million dollars in tax revenue every year in addition to the 30,000 jobs it would create. We could apply that money to the General Fund, to fund education, to fix roads, to fund drug rehab and legitimate law enforcement concerns.
Calling for rehab for cannabis consumers is social engineering at its worst. It’s another tax and spend feel good measure that doesn’t even feel good. It stinks. What are they going to tax next in order to throw all the pot smokers into rehab? It’s terrible to witness the intellectual meltdown of the desk-jockey pundits advocating such blatantly stupid policies that would require a huge tax to carry out. Sending 20,000 cannabis smokers a year to rehab is just as stupid as sending them to prison. It’s a burden we can’t afford. Don’t take our money for such a foolish endeavor. Tax the cannabis we buy instead and use some of it to help the heroin addicts.
The Reading Eagle editorial board concluded with:
“At this point we’re not particularly worried about Pennsylvania changing its marijuana law. As F&M pollster G. Terry Madonna said after the survey results came out, the conservative Republicans who control the state Legislature are not likely to go along with this idea. Nevertheless, we feel obligated to remind them that they should resist any temptation to govern based on poll results. Public opinion can be fleeting, and the job of lawmakers is to do the right thing, even if it isn’t necessarily popular.”
The Reading Eagle has sided with the prohibitionists. History will judge them harshly. It will be known that when change was breaking out all over America, they resisted. They advocated drastically failed policies that were not only wrong, cruel and immoral but blatantly stupid as well. The status quo simply cannot be maintained and change is so obviously coming that it can be seen by all – even those who oppose it.
The people defending this destructive policy are fighting a rearguard action that is doomed to fail. They are like Hitler in the bunker, refusing to surrender as Berlin was being destroyed by the defenders of freedom all around him.
They urge our legislators to do what is right, whether it is popular or not. KCC also urges our legislators to do what is right. In this case it is something that is both right and popular and it is popular BECAUSE it is right – legalize cannabis in Pennsylvania!
Gloating that the Republicans in the Pa. legislature control things and will never go along with legalization is beneath their dignity. Eventually, even Republicans will favor legalizing, taxing and regulating cannabis. It will happen or they will no longer keep control.
We know that the General Assembly is not ready to do the right thing and legalize cannabis. However, we believe that there is strong bipartisan consensus that our laws are wrong and they must change. The agreement is with a form of decriminalization or downgrading of charges from a criminal misdemeanor to a summary offense.
Coincidentally, Berks County representative, Barry Jozwiak has introduced a bill to do just that. It is called HB928 and was just recently passed from the House Transportation Committee to the House Judiciary Committee chaird by Reperesentative Ron Marsico. Jozwiak introduced the bill at the behest of Berks County District Attorney John Adams.
84 years ago today, a Berks County representative got the bill signed into law. The next year he was soundly defeated in a landslide election by the people of Berks who rejected him as completely out of touch with their concerns. Today a Berks County representative is leading the way to downgrade penalties for personal possession of cannabis.
It all started here in Berks County and it’s coming to an end here in Berks County.
Les Stark
Executive Director, Keystone Cannabis Coalition
