SaveCalifornia, the organization that helped bring you Prop. 8, has a new target in it's sights: gay pot.
OK. It's just regular pot. But in the wake of Prop 8's overruling (and subsequent appeal), SaveCalifornia is putting their frustrations toward defeating Prop. 19, California's marijuana legalization initiative.
The LGBT and marijuana legalization movements have a great deal in common. Extremism, misinformation and bigotry have made it difficult for both drug users and homosexuals to be open and come out about their lifestyles. And to be frank, from a small government/personal liberty point of view, whether it’s marijuana or a penis, the government has no right to tell me what I can put into my own body if I don’t harm anyone else.
Last week, SaveCalifornia debuted their anti-legalization commercial (with comments disabled) and new website, StopProp19.com. The new commercial has some black and white images aimed at making legalization look almost as dangerous to the sanctity of the "traditional family" as a gay couple adopting a child.
Even if their intentions are to stop drug abuse, the claims against marijuana made by the ad are questionable.
Marijuana use causes cancer:
While cannabis does contain carcinogens, there is no direct link between long term use and cancer and a NIDA funded study published in 2006 (the largest case control study ever done on this) looking at the association between marijuana use and cancer "unexpectedly concluded that smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer." Dr. Donald Tashkin who headed up the study even used subjects who had smoked over 22,000 joints.
"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."
But here's the real kicker for you, in 2003 The United States of America as represented by the Department of Health and Human Services was granted a patent on cannabinoids as... antioxidant and neuroprotectants. That's right. The U.S. government in all it's drug war glory has a patent on the active and inactive ingredients in marijuana as something that protects your brain (and other) cells!
The gateway theory... has been disproved in a number of studies.
Then there are the claims made about Prop 19 itself: That it will allow marijuana to be sold in grocery stores and that highway accidents will increase. If passed, the law wouldn't allow pot to be sold in grocery stores - it would allow counties to decide if and how they will regulate the sale and taxation of marijuana (and most counties will do no such thing). Driving under the influence remains illegal under Prop 19 and there is a strong argument against pot related accidents increasing based on studies and data. Will teen marijuana use go up? It’s possible. But Prop. 19 doesn’t legalize marijuana for teens. It legalizes if for adults over 21 and creates laws against the sale of cannabis to a minor by an adult similar to the way we regulate alcohol sales.
Now I'm not saying pot is good for anyone (the government can do that with their patent), but SaveCalifornia's claims about legalization seem to be on par with their claims that public schools are pushing homosexual indoctrination on kindergartners.