Chariho Reefer Madness Redux

Tom Gentz becomes a pin-up calendar boy

By Will Collette

If you live within the boundaries of the Chariho School District, chances are you recently received a copy of the Chariho Taskforce’s 2015 wall calendar. The Taskforce, a non-profit that in my opinion has more funding than sense, sent out this expensive mailing to promote its new slogan, “Fit In.”

I don’t know what “Fit In” is supposed to mean, but they use it as a theme throughout the calendar.

I’m guessing this calendar may end up being hung on the wall by maybe a dozen or so people. For just about everyone else, this calendar will “Fit In” with other junk mail paper in their recycling bin.

In many respects, this glossy calendar is an even bigger waste of money than their last mass mailing, the classic “Got Weed?,” which I reviewed here.

The Taskforce is a hardline Prohibition advocate that tolerates absolutely no drug use by anybody. 

That includes medical marijuana, which they dismiss as “still illegal” or recreational use which has been decriminalized.

Here's the banner from the calendar's month of July:

Look, I am a huge fan of non-profits, having spent most of my working life in that world. I am reluctant to tee off on a non-profit unless I think they’re really screwing up. While I share the Taskforce’s general philosophy about preventing substance abuse by school children, I think their approach is not only fifty years out of date, but is also wasteful and perhaps even dangerous.

They sling misinformation at the issue and over-emphasize marijuana (and marijuana prohibition) at the expense of their attention to other more dangerous problems and also at the cost of their own credibility. An example in their calendar is their claims that very few Chariho middle and high school students have used marijuana within the last 30 days.

Really?

Here's the banner from the calendar's month of February:

However, according to a new National Survey on Drug Use and Health, Rhode Islanders smoke more marijuana than even Colorado where recreational use is legal.

As much as anxious parents would want it to be otherwise, the reality is that teens will try to get high. There are so many ways to do so, ranging from the conventional (pot, pilfered prescription drugs, alcohol) to the profoundly weird (huffing aerosols, licking toads, snorting crushed up Skittles®). 

I have never seen any published accounts or research, but I’ll bet at least one teen has tried to get high by smoking Peeps®. There is, however, scientific research (click here) that tobacco and alcohol are detrimental to the health of Peeps®.

This calendar is an anachronism, an artifact of the unsuccessful "just say no" approach. Not for lack of effort by the prohibitionists, drug prohibition has not worked. The War on Drugs is over and we lost.

The one thing we got out of the War on Drugs is the world’s highest incarceration rate. Since the War on Drugs was declared by disgraced President Richard Nixon almost 50 years ago, more than 31 million people have been incarcerated – one out of every ten Americans.

With 2.3 million people currently behind bars, we imprison people at a higher rate than China, Russia, Syria, Iran or Cuba. Pick any country you dislike and they put fewer people in jail than the United States.

Our failed War on Drugs also managed to turn a number of countries such as Mexico, Columbia and Afghanistan into narco-states where their national economies are built on producing and trafficking drugs to the United States. Battles between the cartels and local police, usually funded by the US to interdict drug traffic, have claimed thousands of lives when the streets become war zones.

Then, as we saw last summer in the exodus of children from Central America, people try to enter the US illegally to escape the gang violence our drug policies have caused. And we complain about these children as if we have no responsibility for their plight.

Despite all this, marijuana use remains routine and widespread, so commonplace that legalization or at least decriminalization is the growing reality. Rhode Island has legalized medical marijuana and decriminalized recreational use; it may legalize pot this year.

The US Department of Justice has adopted a new policy that will allow Native American tribes to grow and sell marijuana in accordance with state laws. The Narragansett Tribe, which is a member of the Chariho Taskforce, says it is thinking about it. The Smoke Shop as South County’s first compassion center, maybe?

Now THIS you should worry about

Advocates of marijuana legalization argue that legalization, taxation and regulation will actually curb illegal marijuana use among youth. 

Arguably, our current system of classifying marijuana the same as heroin, cocaine, meth, crack, etc. makes kids more likely to use the hard stuff. After all, if you try pot and realize it isn't as dangerous as you've been told, you might then decide to try drugs that really are dangerous.

The calendar delivers another dose of facts, such as the claim that marijuana is addictive, while failing to note that just about any substance or type of behavior can become addictive. So-called marijuana addiction is nothing compared to the addictive qualities of tobacco and alcohol, not to mention hard drugs like opioids which have killed over 100 Rhode Islanders this year. Marijuana overdose deaths – zero.

So what should we do about kids who want to get high? Honestly, I don’t know.

But I do know that putting them in jail is not the answer. Neither is feeding them a line of caca de toro. It's not telling them not to do it, or else. Having once been a teenager myself, I think there’s a tendency among teens to do things simply because they are told not to.

I think the Chariho Taskforce’s lop-sided emphasis on marijuana prohibition is wrong and wasteful on just about every level, including the repeated threats in their literature that using pot can land you in trouble with the law (see, for example, DOJ policy change noted above). Their disputed medical claims and dubious statistics are not only unconvincing but, in my opinion, counter-productive.

The public health arguments about alcohol, tobacco and hard drugs (legal and illegal) are far more persuasive and scientifically supported. If the Taskforce wants to deal with marijuana as a public health issue, perhaps they ought to re-tool their approach to one that places more emphasis on personal responsibility (e.g. don’t drive when high) than on bogus scare tactics and questionable science.

As an example, read the article following this one, posted by my colleague Tom Ferrio, on the law and driving stoned. In summary: don't, and this the way even those states, like Colorado, that have legalized pot deal with those who would endanger other people's lives.

As for addressing the real threats posed by alcohol, tobacco and hard drugs, we have had many years of experience with what works and what doesn’t. 

Prohibition was fun for some

Prohibition doesn’t. 

But patient, creative public education has cut deeply into tobacco and alcohol use to the point where we can be proud of the results. Why doesn’t the Taskforce use what works rather than this discredited approach? And in calendar form yet.

With all that said, my favorite part of the Chariho Taskforce’s calendar comes on the pages for the month of September which bears the photo of a group of mostly stodgy-looking old men posing in blue tee-shirts for some reason (maybe they want to "Fit In"). 

Almost in the middle of the photo is our own home-grown publicity hound, Charlestown Town Council Boss Tom Gentz, the pride of the CCA Party, fourth from the left wearing his Uncle Fluffy grin.

Personally, I think this calendar would have be a much bigger hit if the guys took one for the team and posed in the nude.

Last year, it cost the Taskforce $10,000 to print “Got Weed?” Given the similar size and quality of the calendar, the cost is probably around that, not accounting for inflation. Then there’s the mailing cost. You paid for it since the Taskforce is funded by tax dollars.

And for what? Hanging calendars is really an old school thing. As a card-carrying official senior citizen, I will admit to choosing to hang one calendar out of the many that are either mailed or given to me, in my home office. I invariably choose the calendar that looks best to me. This calendar doesn’t make the cut.

But I don’t think I’m the Taskforce’s target audience. I’d like to hear from any reader out there about whether their son or daughter, niece or nephew or grandkid actually hangs this calendar in their room. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?