VIDEO: Reefer Madness?

No, that “Got Weed?” mailer was for real

By Will Collette

Recently, many, but not all, people in Charlestown, Richmond and Hopkinton received an expensive-looking, full-color glossy magazine-style brochure with the title, “Got Weed?” There's a large photo of a pair of hands apparently in the act of rolling a joint on the cover (see left).

Some people thought it was a joke. Others thought that maybe it was a fancy ad for one of Rhode Island’s new “compassion centers” for medical marijuana. Or a catalog from a mail-order marijuana operation in Colorado. There was no return address or author on the cover – just a standard postage imprint showing it was sent from Oakland, CA.

But “Got Weed” is a product of the local Chariho Task Force on Substance Abuse Prevention. This Task Force is not a part of the Chariho school system and no one from the school district took part in producing this mailer. It was not reviewed by the staff or the Chariho School Committee.

According to Administrator Paula Augustinho, the Task Force paid “approximately $9,500.00 to have this done.” The “this” is a 16-page, 8.5 x 11 full-color magazine quality piece. They printed 10,000 copies and mailed 8,500. Using PSPrint, a California printer, they apparently saved a lot of money, though it would have been nice to see that money get used to employ Rhode Islanders.

You paid for it because all of the money came from federal block grant funds that the Task Force won in competition with other community needs, such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless and helping to stop domestic violence.

Ms Augustinho said “although I designed this brochure, be assured that my colleagues on the Task Force reviewed and edited this work.”

There is no doubt that our area has a substance abuse problem. We had the horrible October 2011 crash of a carload of Chariho students who got drunk at the home of a former Chariho School Committee member, one of many terrible accidents where alcohol was involved.

Add crack cocaine, crystal meth, bath salts, heroin, “Molly or Ecstasy,” pilfered or abused prescription drugs, etc. and you’ve got trouble right here in River City. All of these require coordinated efforts of schools, parents, social services and law enforcement.

Indeed, the Rhode Island Department of Health reported an alarming spike in drug overdose deaths just in the first half of January – 22 Rhode Islanders ranging in age from 19 to 62 died. They don’t know exactly what drug or drugs caused this surge in deaths in a period when there would normally be perhaps two or three. However, it wasn’t marijuana.

This makes me wonder even more why “Got Weed?” If you get into reading the mailer (if you didn’t get it or can’t find it, click here), you get a message that, frankly, I haven’t heard since I was a teenager in the 1960s. It starts with the message that marijuana is illegal and you can still get arrested. Maybe by local cops if you go outside the bounds of the law or by the federal government who still categorize Marijuana as a Class 1 Controlled Substance.

OK. While “Got Weed” doesn’t actually lie, it does spin the facts. 

While it’s technically true that marijuana is a federal Controlled Substance, the feds have given up on even threatening to bust medical or recreational users. They reserve the right to bust producers and dealers, but even those threats are downplayed.

President Obama as a yoot in Hawaii

In a January 19, 2014 New Yorker interview, President Barack Obama said he is not convinced that marijuana is “more dangerous than alcohol” and said it is “important” to allow recent legalization in Colorado and Washington to continue without federal interference.

"As has been well documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life. I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol…It’s not something I encourage, and I’ve told my daughters I think it’s a bad idea, a waste of time, not very healthy.”

Further, he is troubled by the way that marijuana prohibition has been enforced:

"Middle-class kids don’t get locked up for smoking pot, and poor kids do. And African-American kids and Latino kids are more likely to be poor and less likely to have the resources and the support to avoid unduly harsh penalties…We should not be locking up kids or individual users for long stretches of jail time when some of the folks who are writing those laws have probably done the same thing.”

That puts federally-funded “Got Weed?” somewhat at odds with the Commander in Chief. However, it is pretty much in line with Tea Party Senator Ted Cruz (R) who lambasted President Obama for not bringing the full weight of the federal government down on Colorado’s new pot law.

“Got Weed” continues with a series of disputed medical claims that marijuana is (a) addictive, (b) impairs academic performance and driving and that (c) smoking weed is never healthy. They claim that medical marijuana is not certified by the FDA as being medically safe, except the FDA can't do that while the DEA classified marijuana as a Class 1 Controlled Substance. "Got Weed?" doesn't even accept the possibility that marijuana could be medically useful. But at least they didn't make this claim (click here).

On page six of "Got Weed?", a statistical table ties marijuana use with use of other “illicit drugs,” cocaine, abuse of prescription pain relievers and alcohol.

The implication that marijuana is a “gateway drug” confuses “correlation” with “cause.” While it is statistically true that most hardcore druggies have used marijuana too, there’s a much higher correlation between drinking milk as a child and later using hard drugs. Correlation is not proof.

“Got Weed?” correctly underscores the important role that parents can and should play in helping their children to make good choices. But parents need a lot of strength, good information and credibility if they are to have a successful conversation with their kids. 

“Got Weed?” uses many dubious old-school perspectives that, in my opinion, are more likely to destroy parents’ credibility and ruin any chance a parent might have to communicate with a teenager.

There’s advice on page 8 on how to watch your kid for the deadly signs of reefer use as well as tips on what to look for if you decide to toss their room to search for “drug paraphernalia.”  

There’s advice on page 9 about getting free drug testing kits from the Charlestown, Hopkinton, Richmond or Narragansett Tribe police.

Then, I suppose, you’re ready to follow the advice on page 10 on “how do I talk to my kids about marijuana.” 

According to the advice given, you’re supposed to ask your kids what they know about marijuana, listen carefully, then pour on the “facts,” presumably the highly debatable content of the mailer and the conclusions it draws about the evils of marijuana. 

According to the brochure, even if it’s medical marijuana, it’s all bad. If you don’t get arrested first, you’ll be smoking crack or shooting heroin in no time, and you’ll never get into college because you will be a burned-out stoner. Like the President.

Yeah, that approach REALLY worked well in the 1960s, 70s and 80s when today’s parents came of age, didn’t it? It’s a miracle any of them survived to breed.

I asked a couple of Rhode Island “yoots” who are just past the prime target age for this mailer to read it and comment, which they did.

RI Yoot #1 said that before he turned 21, marijuana was far easier to get than alcohol because alcohol was subject to point-of-sale restrictions. He wondered if the same might happen if marijuana was legalized, as it is in Colorado, with similar point-of-sale restrictions.

“I know many people were exposed to weed before alcohol in high school and I presume that regulation would make it much more difficult for young people to get. I'm curious on how much tax income the state would get if it were legal (state pension amounts?) and have heard rumors of staggering income statistics since Colorado has legalized it.”

Rhode Island Yoot #2 focused primarily on the way the Task Force presented its information. He noted “the lack of sources for most of the facts” and thought a bibliography would have been helpful. He questioned who the target audience was, thinking the title and graphics suggested a youth audience, but the content was definitely for adults.

Overall, he “wasn't impressed with the graphics and page layouts” calling them “amateurish.” He noted some pages had too much going on, others looked rushed and some graphics seemed oddly placed.

But he wanted to know why the Task Force was “only focusing on weed when there are more dangerous drugs out there, such as Molly.  It seemed as though instead of focusing just on weed they should have educated parents on all the other dangerous drugs that are on the streets.”

He did not like the “in your face scare tactics.” He said it “would have been more helpful if it educated parents on a greater spectrum of dangers, instead of focusing on marijuana.”

For the rest of this Mike Luckovich cartoon, click here

Rhode Island Yoot #1 e-mailed me the day after the Patriots lost to the Broncos for the right to go to the Superbowl, to say “There is now a direct correlation between a state legalizing weed and its team going to the Super Bowl.”

Ah, the wisdom of yoot!

Look, I do not approve of giving children easy access to marijuana any more than I want to see kids smoke tobacco or drink alcohol. I can appreciate how overwhelming it must be for the good people on the Chariho Task Force to try to figure out how to help people make good choices and avoid bad ones.

But “Got Weed?” could turn out to cause more harm than good if parents take its hyperbolic, and sometimes flat out wrong advice and information and use it on their kids. 

Every substance – tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, heroin, meth, etc. - represents different levels of risk, needs its own specific kinds of social policies and pose different challenges for parents.

I think there is a general consensus that our “War on Drugs” has been, to date, about as effective and popular as our wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

At a certain point, we have to come to the realization that we need to stop the war and do something else. Let’s try to do it with the least amount of carnage and broken lives.

As President Obama admitted, we are filling our prisons with people for drug offenses. We jail more of our people than any other nation, and more than half of those we jail are for drug offenses. This war must end, but sad to say, things like “Got Weed?” do not help.

For your viewing pleasure, here is the full, colorized version of that 1936 classic film "Reefer Madness." See how many similarities you can find between this movie and the "Got Weed?" mailer.