Showing posts with label SAM. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SAM. Show all posts

Sunday, December 15, 2019

The Anti-Legalization Movement Is Grasping At Straws Now

The anti-legalization movement in regards to cannabis has been getting quite desperate lately.  For example, Kevin Sabet of the anti-legalization group Project SAM has lately been disingenuously harping on the mystery vaping illness (now called EVALI) and shifting the spotlight onto legal cannabis vape products from licensed dispensaries while glossing over that inconvenient fact that the vast, vast, majority of the over 2000 EVALI cases so far are linked to black-market and counterfeit THC vape cartridges (as well as sketchy gray-market CBD vape cartridges).  In fact, non-legalization states have had far more EVALI cases than legalization states, though no state seems to be immune to it.  And the primary culprit appears to be Vitamin E Acetate (and possibly other questionable additives), and perhaps even the heavy metals from janky devices, as opposed to the actual cannabis itself, though he slyly glosses over that as well.  The biggest irony, of course, is that banning legal cannabis dispensaries will only drive even more consumers to the black market, thus pouring gasoline on the raging fires of EVALI.

In other words, Kevin Sabet and Project SAM are nothing more than concern trolls, and need to be taken with at least a grain of salt, if not a whole pound.  While there have been a few outlier cases of EVALI ostensibly linked to legal cannabis products from licensed dispensaries in some states, most of these cases remain either unconfirmed and/or the use of black market, counterfeit, or modified vape products has not been entirely ruled out in such cases.  To the extent that any of these are in fact caused by rogue and adulterated products from bad actors in the legitimate cannabis market, the solution is better regulation and oversight, NOT prohbition.

(In the meantime, it is probably best for the time being for current cannabis vapers to switch to dry-herb vaporizers, which have never been linked to EVALI or any other illness, to vape regular weed if you don't want to smoke it, just to be on the safe side.  Or at the very least, do your research and due diligence, and avoid all black-market, counterfeit, janky, suspect, and/or modified products like the plague.  And there are also edibles and tinctures.)

Oh and by the way, the anti-legalization movement is apparently also tainted with some thinly- and not-so-thinly-veiled anti-Semitism as well.  Not everyone of course, but as the Labour Party in the UK has unfortunately learned the hard way, failing to condemn it, turning a blind eye to it, or even creating a mere perception of same, has the same impact as deliberate and overt Jew-hatred and Jew-baiting does, and we know impact > intent.  And of course, the anti-Semitism in the broader cannabis prohibitionist movement goes back to at least Nixon and his notorious red-baiting and Jew-baiting conspiracy theories, while the movement's virulent racism and xenophobia in general goes all the way back to the very genesis of the movement over a century ago.

To be fair, there is no evidence that Kevin Sabet (or Project SAM in general) personally holds any anti-Semitic or racist views, with their only known bigotry being against cannabis and its users.  But in the broader cannabis prohibitionist movement today, others like Roger Morgan et al. DO apparently hold enough anti-Semitic views to be willing to openly repeat (if not concoct) long-since debunked anti-Semitic conspiracy theories (mainly involving George Soros) all the same, and the silence from Sabet and Project SAM (who just so happen to also share a connection with Morgan) is truly deafening indeed.

To the cannabis prohibitionist / anti-legalization movement, we have one question for you:  how does it feel to be on the wrong side of history?  Because we wouldn't know anything about that.