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Democratic Doctor: Legalizing Pot Helps Con Artists, Hurts Democrats
By
Christopher Robbins
Published Nov 8, 2012
Modified Nov 8, 2012
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By
Christopher Robbins
Published Nov 8, 2012
Modified Nov 8, 2012
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If the Obama administration finally capitulates to common sense and allows the recently passed marijuana legalization laws in Colorado and Washington to spread like seeds you tossed from a bag of schwag in Union Square, America may someday stop spending billions of dollars to prop up drug cartels and incarcerate a disproportionate amount of black and brown people. In 40 years, we'll be strolling through a museum, puffing on a Gandalf with our robot girlfriends, laughing at New York Times op-eds like the one published today by a psychiatrist and "lifelong partisan Democrat" ("Look, he thought blind fealty to a political party afforded him credibility! 2012 was so crazy.") But until that day comes, it is our duty to mock them.
The psychiatrist, Dr. Ed Gogek, who apparently took time off writing the screenplay for Reefer Madness II: The Guy From The Saw Movies Smokes Weed, begins with a plea to his party.
Democrats should think twice about becoming the party of pot. I’m a lifelong partisan Democrat, but I’ve also spent 25 years as a doctor treating drug abusers, and I know their games. They’re excellent con artists.
Indeed, some have even been known to use Visine to obscure the crimson terror lurking behind their eyes. Go on, doctor.
Take, for example, medical marijuana laws. They were sold to more than a dozen states with promises that they’re only for serious illnesses like cancer.
But that’s not how they work in practice. Almost all marijuana cardholders claim they need it for various kinds of pain, but pain is easy to fake and almost impossible to disprove. In Oregon and Colorado, 94 percent of cardholders get their pot for pain. In Arizona, it’s 90 percent. Serious illnesses barely register…The best explanation for such skewed numbers is that most medical marijuana recipients are drug abusers who are either faking or exaggerating their problems.
Is that really the "best" explanation? Isn't it plausible that most of those people just want to get high and aren't "drug abusers" collecting railroad ties to sell for scrap metal to buy dime bags meant for dying people?
Indeed, marijuana activists use phony science, just as global warming deniers do.
Look no further than the credentials of the neuropsychiatry department at the University of Saskatchewan—Saskatchewan! Is that even a real place? (Also: the letters in the word Saskatchewan can be scrambled to read: "University of Phoenix.")
And last we checked, the Journal of the American Medical Association was a skateboarding zine that our cousins read after whipping stray cats with coathangers (we may be misremembering this but still).
They’ve even produced their own flawed scientific studies supposedly proving that medical marijuana laws don’t increase use among teenagers, when almost all the evidence says just the opposite. How can Democrats criticize Republicans for disregarding science and making up facts when people on our side do the same?
"Almost all of the evidence"—except for this study that refutes "all the evidence," compiled from data gathered by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health and published in the Annals of Epidemiology, another La Rouche pamphlet. States that have a high rate of marijuana use, teenagers included, are the states that tend to pass medical marijuana laws, but whatever. Con artists.
Democrats know we need government regulation to protect the public from unhealthy products. But the marijuana lobby wants us to distrust two centerpieces of the regulatory state, the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The whole purpose of medical marijuana laws is to evade the regulatory power of these agencies.
Who's ever heard of a reason to distrust the FDA or the DEA?
Legalization would also undermine a successful Democratic program: drug courts, which were written into the 1994 crime bill by Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. They use coercion, the threat of jail, to keep addicts in treatment.
But the marijuana lobby opposes coercion. That’s not surprising. Drug users just want to be left alone to get high. If we side with them, we’re undercutting the Democratic answer to substance abuse.
Jacob Sullum at Reason offers the best line to counter this: "Democrats: the Party of Control, Coercion, and Collectivism! No wonder they won." And since when did the "Democratic answer" also happen to be the alcohol, pharmaceutical & private prison lobbies' answer too? Oh, right.
Lets hope that President Obama leaves Dr. Gogek alone to get high off his antiquated view of drug policy.
Tagged
common sense
dea
drugs
fda
marijuana
war on drugs
Christopher Robbins
Christopher Robbins is a New York City reporter covering transportation, affordable housing, local politics, and criminal justice. His work has also appeared in New York Magazine, The Village Voice and The New York Times. Chris is a graduate of Patrick Henry High School in Roanoke, Virginia, and enjoys biking to Fort Tilden in the summertime.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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