This is Your Newspaper. This is Your Newspaper on Drugs.

teh
Rich Miller points us to this scary article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

It starts with a lame pun (and I know lame puns):

The national debate over medical marijuana is lighting up in Illinois.

Ha, ha. Get it – lighting up. But it gets funnier.

Under a bill that could be debated in Springfield as early as today, patients would be allowed to possess small amounts of marijuana - which advocates say helps pain sufferers, but opponents say would open the door to legalized pot.

[snip]

Several groups, including the Illinois State Police, the Illinois Department of Public Health and the Illinois Sheriffs' Association, all oppose the bill. Even medical use is too much, they say, because pot is a harmful, addictive drug.

Sorry but marijuana is not physically addictive. It may be mentally addictive much the same way we get “hooked” on anything that brings us pleasure but it is not addictive in the same way that cocaine or caffeine or nicotine is. But let’s not pick nits, on with the story…

"It's a very frightening situation," said Judy Kreamer, president of Educating Voices Inc., an anti-drug organization based in Naperville, Ill. Children would be the ones most hurt by medical marijuana, she said. "We don't want to be giving kids the message that this is safe, that this is medicine."

Well Judy, lots of “safe” medicines you get at the pharmacy should not be taken by children. Children aren’t “hurt” by these medications unless some idiot adult gives it to them. how is this different?

Kreamer said the temptation was too great for people to sell their excess marijuana, which "devastates" the lives of people who use it. Compared with the small number of people who'd be helped by medical marijuana, it isn't worth the risk, she said. She said Illinois would become like California, which has thousands of marijuana "dispensaries" and where, she said, "addicts" run rampant.

Holy shit! I was planning a trip to California this spring but in light of these revelations I’m going to have to cancel. Rampant running addicts scare me! And who wants to be subjected to the horrors of pot dispensaries or ill people with no self-control pushing their “excess” pot on school playgrounds? Eeeeek!

Good lord, people, can you get any more hysterical about nothing. The mixed messages kids get are from the kind of bullshit hype presented in this article versus what they know to be true from experience. Lunatics like Kreamer are the ones putting kids at risk by presenting totally incredible arguments that lead kids to believe any anti-drug message is crap.