Pubdate: Thu, 12 Mar 2015
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Column: Weed Between the Lines
Copyright: 2015 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

BUZZED BUNNIES: THE LAST SPURTS OF 'REEFER MADNESS'

Like everyone else, the headlines were hard to miss. "DEA Warns of 
Stoned Rabbits if Utah Passes Medical Marijuana" was over a story in 
The Washington Post. A search for "cannabis bunnies Utah" yielded 
page after page of rewrites of that same tale with variant headlines 
about small mammals in THC ecstasy.

Buzzed bunnies? Washington Post? WTF?

I decided to access the actual testimony, which came from special DEA 
agent Matt Fairbanks on Feb. 26 before the Utah Senate Judiciary, Law 
Enforcement and Criminal Justice Standing Committee in room 250 of 
the state capitol in Salt Lake City.

Fairbanks is one of five officers and health officials who testified 
that day against S.B. 259 Medical Cannabis Amendments, a bill 
introduced to modify provisions in a law passed last year that lets 
"certified" individuals suffering from intractable epileptic 
disorders use CBD oil to treat seizures.

While the bill made it legal to possess CBD oil, the process of 
licensing was expensive and onerous. Since there was no provision to 
get CBD products in the state, people needed to go (where else?) to 
Colorado for the strain, known as "Charlotte's Web," and bring it 
across the state line, which was illegal, too. The new bill would 
change some of the original rules, including allowing licensed 
growers/manufacturers to provide CBD oil for those individuals.

Opposing the bill, special agent Fairbanks first produced a chart 
that indicated that usage among young adults is rising in states 
where medical marijuana has been allowed and cited medical 
associations that are on the record against medical marijuana. He 
told the committee that he listened to the testimony of people who 
use medical marijuana and he understands their pain.

"I deal in facts. I deal in science," he said. "I want the science 
studied, looked at and specifically gone over."

So far, so good.

At this point we find out that special agent Fairbanks is a "special" 
agent because he is a member of the marijuana eradication unit, which 
he tells the committee has spent "millions of dollars and thousands 
of man-hours" to exterminate almost 100,000 illegal plants in Utah's 
outdoor spaces in the last two years.

OK. He said that illegal grow operations use pesticides and harmful 
chemicals and can cause erosion and deforestation. I can't argue with that.

"I spend time up on those mountains protecting our environment," he said.

But then he heads directly into the ditch.

"The deforestation has left marijuana grows with rabbits that have 
developed a taste for the marijuana, where one of them refused to 
leave us. We took all the marijuana around him, but his natural 
instincts to run were somehow gone."

That's it. This man of science told a state legislative committee 
that he witnessed a rabbit that wouldn't leave an area when ordered 
by environmentalist DEA agents and concluded it was because the bunny 
was hitting the edibles a little too hard.

"We don't know how to protect our backcountry," he said.

What Fairbanks said is certainly fodder for idiotic news of the day, 
but the implications aren't as funny. Those millions of dollars that 
Fairbanks and his merry band of DEA environmentalists spent to 
confiscate pot plants haven't stopped Utah citizens from using 
cannabis, but it does give his squad a number (150,000 plants) to 
pump up his pride and justify his efforts and expenditures.

This is how the drug war and those who fight it feed upon themselves. 
Fairbanks or the other law officials never consider the obvious: that 
if marijuana were regulated, there wouldn't be a need for the illegal 
grows on national forest lands. Or the even more obvious: that none 
of the pot being grown there has anything to do with medical 
patients. Those grows are for Utah citizens who use cannabis despite 
the restrictions, and it has been going on long before the Utah 
medical law was passed last year.

We make light of this kind of reefer madness, and rightly so. But 
since the demonization of marijuana began after alcohol prohibition 
ended, society has deemed that alcohol, an extremely dangerous drug, 
is the only acceptable way to get "high." That's ridiculous, of 
course. People will always find ways to change their consciousness, 
and polls continue to indicate that more and more Americans don't 
support the idea of millions of their tax dollars going to DEA agents 
who spend their time keeping the nation safe from national forest pot grows.

In the end, cooler heads prevailed. The committee wasn't notably 
persuaded by Fairbank's arguments about out-of-control fauna.

The bill passed 4-2 and is waiting to be introduced on the Utah Senate floor.

Respond: You can hear Leland discuss his most recent column and Colorado 
cannabis issues each Thursday morning on KGNU. http://news.kgnu.org/weed
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom