Pubdate: Sat, 28 Jul 2012
Source: Oregonian, The (Portland, OR)
Copyright: 2012 The Oregonian
Contact:  http://www.oregonlive.com/oregonian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/324
Author: Susan Nielsen
Cited: http://octa2012.org/oregon-cannabis-tax-act-legislation/

MARIJUANA IN OREGON: POT LEGALIZATION MEASURE WOULD GIVE KIDS QUITE AN 
EDUCATION

Hey, kids! Long-term and heavy use of marijuana isn't bad for the
brain!

This is the kind of fact included in the text of Measure 80, a
marijuana-legalization initiative that qualified this month for the
November ballot in Oregon. The measure isn't just a pushback against
federal drug laws. It's also a backdoor attempt to make public schools
teach weed-friendly lessons to students.

This seems like a new form of Reefer Madness, trading overly negative
rhetoric about drugs for a different type of propaganda.

Measure 80, also known as the Oregon Cannabis Tax Act, would legalize
the growing and sale of marijuana for adults 21 and older. From a
distance, the citizen initiative seems to reflect Oregon's healthy
libertarian streak and its admirably permissive attitude toward
private habits. Up close, the measure is more ambitious. It appears
eager to indoctrinate the next generation into thinking of marijuana
use as no big deal and cannabis cultivation as downright patriotic.

(Hey, kids! Did you know that George Washington grew cannabis, or that
Thomas Jefferson invented a cannabis-processing device? It says so in
Measure 80.)

Backers say taxing commercial marijuana sales would generate $140
million a year. Under the measure, one percent of the net proceeds
from those sales would help fund a drug education program in all
Oregon school districts. The program would be required to meet three
goals. First, it would teach students how drug abusers harm others.
Second, it would convince students to be good citizens if they choose
to use psychoactive drugs as adults. (Psychoactive is a broad term
covering everything from caffeine to opioids, LSD and marijuana.)

Third, it would persuade students to decline to do drugs "by providing
them with accurate information about the threat these drugs pose to
their mental and physical development" (italics added).

Oregon teachers might wonder what constitutes "accurate information"
about marijuana, the most politicized weed on the planet. Helpfully,
the initiative sponsors anticipated the question. The measure is
silent on the potential health risks of teen marijuana use, and it
includes a 30-point preamble of beliefs and findings that Oregonians,
by voting yes, declare to be true.

For example, Measure 80 says:

* Long-term, heavy marijuana users "do not deviate significantly from
their social peers in terms of mental function."

* Moderate marijuana use "causes very little impairment of psychomotor
functions."

* People who say marijuana is a gateway drug are lying. In fact, such
lies "destroy the credibility of valid educational messages about
moderate and responsible use (of marijuana) and valid warnings against
other truly dangerous drugs."

* Marijuana is a "relatively nonaddictive and comparatively harmless
euphoriant used and cultivated for more than 10,000 years without a
single lethal overdose."

* Marijuana use "does not constitute a public health problem of any
significant dimension."

* People have been misled about the true environmental and medical
benefits of hemp and marijuana by "federal and corporate
misinformation campaigns."

Got that? And don't forget the part about George Washington and Thomas
Jefferson, our cannabis-loving Founding Fathers.

Initiative petitioner Paul Stanford, who owns a chain of medical
marijuana clinics, said the pro-drug preamble was written as part of a
larger legal strategy to prevail in court against the federal
government, which still defines marijuana as an illegal drug without
medical or social value. He said the measure expressly prohibits teen
marijuana use, which is true. The goal of the drug education program,
he said during an interview last week with The Oregonian editorial
board, is simply to provide students with accurate and scientific
information about drugs.

He then returned to his remarks about the evils of marijuana
prohibition and the wonders of cannabis.

It's not clear who would develop the curriculum for Oregon's drug
education program. Maybe the Department of Education or local school
districts would do the work. Perhaps the Oregon Cannabis Commission, a
grower-dominated group created by Measure 80, would provide oversight.

Either way, the initiative puts Oregon in the business of promoting
and selling marijuana. It also requires "accurate" drug education in
schools, after spending several pages reciting, chapter and verse,
what Oregonians would hereby define as The Truth about marijuana.

That's not decriminalization -- or education, either.

It's religion.
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MAP posted-by: Matt