Now anyone who is familiar with Calvina already knows of her propensity toward lunacy — Here’s just one example, “Truly sick people who deserve legitimate medical treatment have been duped into believing that marijuana will help them, while in reality it is hurting them.” — but this time, in her vitriol against California’s Prop. 19, she really outdoes herself, arguing that regulating the adult use of cannabis is a threat to… marriage!

Should California legalize pot?
via The Christian Science Monitor

No: legalization means more costs

… Legalizing marijuana use would substantially increase its already formidable costs to society. That’s because the initiative would allow individuals to possess up to about 120 joints and cultivate 25 square feet of plants, capable of yielding up to 240,000 joints.

… Legalization would also create an influx in drugged-driving fatalities, more deteriorated neighborhoods, more divorce, more domestic violence, more child abuse, and more addiction!

Whoa — 120 joints per ounce?! As NORML Outeach Director Russ Belville writes, that’s some fuzzy math. (A more realistic conversion might be 30, or at most 60, joints.) However, such hyperbole is par for the course for our opposition. They are well aware that they can not win this debate on merit, and as a result they now have only the most foolish fear-mongering to fall back on. Fortunately, the polls show that this tactic is also doomed to fail.

(FYI, for those wishing to weigh in on the CSM debate, you can post your comments on Yahoo News here.)

And speaking of fear-mongering, I have an op/ed in today’s online version of The Hill rebutting claims of various Prop. 19 detractors, including California Senator Diane Feinstein and Drug Czar Gil Kerlikowske. Here is an excerpt:

Proposition 19 is the right direction
via The Hill.com

So then why are Sen. Feinstein and the drug czars so worried about adults consuming it in the privacy of their own home?

California lawmakers criminalized the possession and use of marijuana in 1913 — a full 24 years before the federal government enacted prohibition. Yet right now in California, the state Board of Equalization reports that some 400,000 use marijuana daily. Self-evidently, cannabis is here to stay.

It’s time to reject the drug czar’s tired rhetoric, and abandon the failed federal policy of criminal marijuana prohibition. Let’s stop ceding control of this market to unregulated, untaxed criminal enterprises and put it in the hands of licensed businesses. Let’s stop sanctioning adults for private behavior that is engaged in absent of harm to others. …Proposition 19 is a first step in this direction.

Read NORML’s full commentary here.

The Hill’s ever-popular Congress blog ‘is where lawmakers come to blog.’ It’s also where legislators and other politicos — such as staffers at the Drug Czar’s office (hint, hint) — come to gauge the pulse of the public. Given that this is a paper of record in these folks’ backyard, why not send a message to those in Washington that their opposition is out of touch with voter sentiment. You can make your voice heard by leaving your feedback here.

Frustratingly, NORML recently discovered through a tip from a supporter and a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that an anti-drug group based in Florida called Drug Free America Foundation (DFAF) in their zeal against anything having to do with cannabis harass major corporations and retailers to stop marketing all products that are made of hemp, books that educate about the plant and even CDs from musical artists that dare mention the word ‘hemp’.

One of DFAF’s targets was retail giant Wal-Mart. In 2005, DFAF director Calvina Fay (a former law enforcement employee) wrote to the CEO of Wal-Mart, S. Robeson Walton, bringing to his attention that of the tens of thousands of products Wal-Mart sells, DFAF took great umbrage with the company for selling two hemp-related books and a CD by Canadian rock band ‘Chixdiggit’.

“Save Money. Live Better.” (Wal-Mart motto)
A search of Wal-Mart’s webpage today, and a trip to a Wal-Mart in Maryland confirms, that apparently DFAF’s harassment of Wal-Mart worked as the company no longer sells any book titles concerning hemp, no hemp-related clothing, jewelry or backpacks. However, despite DFAF’s protest, Wal-Mart still retails CDs by Chixdiggit, featuring the song ‘Hemp, hemp hooray!’

What can cannabis consumers and concerned citizens do to counter the anti-cannabis advocacy of groups like DFAF? Do the same thing! Write to the CEOs and/or owners of retail stores and tell them that you logically want hemp-based products to purchase for all obvious reasons—hemp is an environmentally safe, responsible and valuable agricultural product that takes little fertilizer and almost no pesticide to produce a cash crop that is as utilitarian, if not more so, than the soybean.

Let prospective business owners who may have a commercial interest in selling hemp products know that virtually every country in the world (even though ‘marijuana’ is not legal in these countries to ingest) allows non-psychoactive hemp to be cultivated and used for industrial purposes/apparel, and that the two primary reasons that hemp is not a staple agricultural commodity in America is 1) because of the country’s misguided and blanket cannabis prohibition (a.k.a. Reefer Madness) created by the federal government in 1937, and 2) so-called anti-drug groups disingenuously confusing industrial hemp with marijuana for the purposes of continuing the mindless practice of opposing any human interaction at all with the cannabis plant, be it for adult recreant use, a safe/non-toxic therapeutic or as a valuable industrial plant that humans have been cultivating and employing for the betterment of society for thousands of years.

On this 38th Earth Day, do something bold for the planet and personal freedom: Support and commend your local retailers and stores that carry hemp products while at the same time opposing anti-drug groups like DFAF from making the war on some drugs any worse for society or the environment than it already has become.

Earth Day Bonus in Washington, DC – After nearly 12 years without a true hemp store, eco-minded consumers in the nation’s capital can finally purchase hemp apparel and products with the grand opening this week of Capitol Hemp in the Adams Morgan neighborhood.