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Montini: Marijuana foes now blowing smoke...at me?

EJ Montini, The Republic | azcentral.com 6:37 a.m. MST February 15, 2016

The leaders of the effort against the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol are using scare tactics and questionable information to defeat the measure and they’re angry with me for pointing this out. So they wrote a letter to the editor taking me to task … with MORE scare tactics.

It’s sad, really.

And disappointing.

The vice-chair of the so-called Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy is Yavapai County Attorney Shelia Polk. If this were a trial her “evidence” would never hold up in court.

Polk and Seth Leibson, a radio talk-show host who heads the anti-marijuana group, wrote a letter to the editor of The Arizona Republic saying, among other things, that youngsters will use more marijuana if the proposition passes and that marijuana is more potent than it was before.

Fear. Scare tactics. Supposition.

First, if we legalize marijuana it can be regulated and sold only to adults. Plus, the marijuana will be subject to the kind of product testing that could better ensure safety.

I accept and respect those who believe legalizing marijuana is a bad idea or simply oppose it on moral grounds.

I'm fine with that.

But if the argument against legalizing pot is that teens might use more marijuana we’re going to have to revise and revoke several laws.

For example, we’ll have to re-institute prohibition, making alcohol illegal to adults because we all know that youngsters sometimes get ahold of it.

Same thing with cigarettes. Only adults can legally purchase smokes but we all know that kids find ways to get them.

We’ll have to outlaw everything that’s legal for adults but that kids do anyway.

For instance, we’d ban R-rated movies, which aren’t supposed to admit youngsters without an accompanying adult but, come on, we we’ve all seen kids in theaters.

And we’ll have to outlaw sex between consenting adults.

Sorry.

But using the logic of Leibsohn and Polk grown-ups will have to make this sacrifice in order to prevent non-adults from doing … it.

The simple truth is that times change.

Sooner or later we’re going to quit wasting money prosecuting marijuana users and start taxing them.

The chairman of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, J. P. Holyoak, has explained it this way: “Regulating marijuana like alcohol would bolster our state’s economy with new tax revenue, new jobs, and new business opportunities. Business leaders typically recognize the value of a legal and regulated alcohol market for adults. Our initiative would establish a similar system but for an objectively less harmful product.”

That’s it in a nutshell.

Everything else is … smoke.