| Screen Capture: Reality Catcher |
| The Stop Prop 19 people aren’t interested in your feedback on their little video. This is a one-way conversation, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?! |
A far-right conservative political group called SaveCalifornia.com is turning its unwholesome attention from anti-gay marriage legislation, Prop 8, to fighting this year’s pro-marijuana legislation, Prop 19, the legalization measure on November’s California ballot.
The group’s inaugural television ad ignores decades of scientific evidence showing showing otherwise to claim that marijuana is a “gateway drug” leading to methamphetamine and cocaine, and that it’s the addiction most cited by teenagers in drug rehab (failing to mention that most of those teens were forced into “marijuana rehab” under threat of jail).
Tellingly, both comments and the “Like/Dislike” buttons have been turned off on the YouTube video. SaveCalifornia doesn’t want a dialogue with Californians — it wants to lecture Californians.
SaveCalifornia founder Randy Thomasson is evidently fond of 20th Century marijuana myths, as he also drags out another one: He claims that today’s pot is several times more potent than it was in decades past.
But, then, what can you really expect from a guy who used his own website to compare ordering county clerks in California to marry same sex couples, to a Nazi officer being ordered to “gas the Jews” during World War II.
As reported by Pam Spaulding at Pandagon, “It’s so disgusting that someone probably told him it was a bit of a bad idea to run this,” so he “rewrote the section — but not before the original had been cached by Google.”
Thomasson called Harvey Milk Day a “moral crime,” and said that “teachers, principals, and schools that push Harvey Milk’s values are responsible for the degradation of children as human beings,” according to One News Now.
The group is launching a StopProp19 website this week, reports Dennis Romero at the L.A. Weekly. But the site still wasn’t online as of Thursday morning.
Supporters of Prop 19, which would legalize marijuana for adults in California, argue that the measure would help reduce violence and crime; reduce racially based arrests; generate more than $1 billion in taxes; create 60,000 to 110,000 jobs; reduce police corruption; increase respect for police and the law; free police to focus on property and violent crimes; reduce prison costs and prison overcrowding; expand California’s economy by $16 to $23 billion; reduce drug cartels’ revenue; reduce environmental damage from illegal grows; and allow adults to choose a safer alternative to alcohol.
For more information on Prop 19, visit Yes19.org.
If you’d like to give some feedback to the anti-Prop 19 crowd over at SaveCalifornia, here’s their contact info, thanks to activist Juli Indica.
“SaveCalifornia is not saving California but destroying our way of life,” Juli told Toke of the Town Thursday afternoon.