Clueless Journalist Reports On ‘Marijuana Lab’ In St. Louis

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Photo: Offbeat News
It may look an awfully lot like a, well, garden-variety GARDEN to you. But to Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis County Police, it’s a dangerous DRUG LAB — the kind for which you take away people’s kids. Oh, and get big Drug War grants, too!

​A marijuana “lab“?
Really, Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? REALLY??
“A North St. Louis County couple has been charged with four counts of endangering the welfare of a child after police found a marijuana growth lab in their basement,” Byers cluelessly reports Thursday.
“Todd, 43, and Angela Priest, 33… had four children between the ages of 2 and 4 living with them when St. Louis County Police found the active marijuana growth lab in their basement,” Christine gives us to believe. [Italics added.]


St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Gotta watch for those dangerous “marijuana labs”! Christine says so.

​”The Priests knowingly allowed the children to enter the house from Feb. 1 through 12, according to court documents,” Byers soberly tells us.
Well, since the kids freakin’ LIVED THERE, it doesn’t seem that unusual to let them “enter the house,” Christine.
And since marijuana is a freakin’ PLANT, Christine, you don’t need a god-damned LAB to grow it, OK? Do you have trouble remembering that? Make a note of it. 
Maybe it wouldn’t matter so much if some things that are kind of important here weren’t hanging in the balance — like good people being able to keep their kids, Christine.
But this casual, yet Orwellian twisting of the language to justify barbarity — taking children away from the parents! — is inexcusable.
Such a transparent attempt to make marijuana seem more threatening — more like meth or something, since you apparently want us to believe it’s made in “labs” — would be laughable if it weren’t so damaging.
Please try to remember, Christine: Your job is to report the news, not to peddle ridiculous, discredited police propaganda.
When you descend into that sort of non-journalism, it makes it really hard to take you seriously.
“Marijuana growth lab? You mean marijuana grow room?” asks reasonable Post-Dispatch reader “huckleberry.”  “Is this some sort of attempt by law enforcement to rename grow operations into ‘clandestine drug labs’ so they can seek more money?”
“So I would have to assume by the charges that the lights would be harmful to the kids?” asked “sacatc.” “Did they have some sort of rare skin disorder where they needed to be kept in the dark? Maybe they were allergic to dirt? The charges don’t make sense to me.”
Try to get the actual story next time. You know, as in “two sides to every…”?
Don’t print police nonsense as if it were handed to you on a stone tablet atop some mountain, ‘k?
If you still have a job after this appalling display of ineptitude, that is.
If you’d like to encourage Christine Byers of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to do a better job of reporting next time, you can send inspirational emails to her at [email protected].
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