New anti-marijuana propaganda film comin' your way!
[Crossposted from GreenState Project and Diatribune]
I don't really know what it is, but America's "leaders" can't do anything but lie through their teeth.
Of course, I am talking about cannabis now: reefer, man....Mar-ju-wanna - The Devil Weed with roots in Hell!
Since reality, as expressed by scientific studies and people's firsthand experiences, doesn't cooperate with the forces of enforced ignorance, blind stupidity, and fascism, a new scare-mongering anti-marijuana film is being released. The intended target: Parents.
Consider it a sequel to the hysterical (but was 'sposed to be serious) Reefer Madness.
Make the jump - it'll be fun! (Everybody else is doing it...you don't wanna be...um...square, do you?)
First, here's a brief clip of that old film, recut by somebody who did a fair job encapsulating the essence of this film.
Note that the e-mail address on the clip is not mine. I had nothing to do with this.
That film is as responsible for cannabis being illegal as anything.
Since then that movie has been seen as hysterically funny because none of the crap portrayed in it is remotely true or accurate. It was a scare-mongering film designed to scare people into accepting what was, at the time, an unpopular act to make the plant illegal.
The film gets it's title from some of the latest bullshit secreted by John Walters, Drug Czar for Team Bush. (Anybody see a credibility problem to begin with? One more lying crony.)
The Purple Brain: America's New Reefer Madness
The plot is as follows: Sure, the pot you and your 40-something peers once enjoyed may have been innocuous, but that's only because it bears no resemblance to the super-potent weed of today-- strains with such foreboding names as "Train wreck," "AK-47," and "The Purple." As proclaimed by Drug Czar John Walters recently, "[W]e are no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s -- this is [in computer parlance] Pot 2.0."
To top off this frightening message, unsubstantiated claims of "brain damage" resulting from the use of this super-pot are new buzzwords in today's Prevention circles.
God...these guys cannot come up with anything. I suppose to be positive I could commend them for recycling: they have reduced the argument to nonsense, they have re-used the same old scare-mongering ideas and they have totally recycled the intent: to deceive people from what is actually known to be true. The authors note :"the story line has no credibility.
Well, duh.
The whole of reefer madness and cannabis prohibition has no credibility. It is maintained by force and intimidation, namely in the arresting of Americans every 40 seconds for cannabis touching (the whole meaning of "possession" is "touching".
Have some more:
Unlike alcohol -- or even aspirin, -- today's marijuana still poses no risk of fatal overdose, regardless of the strength of its primary psychoactive ingredient, THC. Moreover, cannabis consumers readily distinguish between low and high potency marijuana and moderate their use accordingly.
Finally, despite claims that marijuana alters the brain, it is important to note that THC -- regardless of its potency -- is surprisingly non-toxic to the adult as well as the teenage brain. Recently scientists at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research reported that they could find "no ... evidence of cerebral atrophy or loss of white matter integrity" attributable to cannabis use in the brains of frequent adolescent marijuana users (compared to non-using controls) after performing MRI scans and other advanced imaging technology. Separate studies assessing the cognitive skills of long-term marijuana smokers have also reported no demonstrable deficits.
I remember seeing - perhaps you do to - a pernicious anti-marijuana ad back in the late 1980's. It was purportedly of an eeg of a teenager; first alert and then under the influence of the Devil Weed. The second eeg is lifeless. IT was totally and intentionally deceptive but ti was viewed one morning by a neurologist who understood what he was seeing and took pains to complain about it. Ad pulled.
Here's my big serious concern:
What's really frightening is that when teens realize they've been deceived about marijuana, they tend to disregard warnings about the very real dangers of hard drugs like cocaine and heroin. It's this latter scenario that ultimately trumps The Purple Brain as the real horror show.
The more the government lies about pot, the more teenagers think they have been lied to about everything. While they have been lied to about MOST EVERYTHING, we know that real drugs (cocaine, heroin, pharmaceuticals) ARE bad, addictive, and dangerous. So they go experimenting and end up, all to often, in real trouble.
I searched for some sort of advanced release trailer of the film, but couldn't find one. Not one, other than the AlterNet article referenced above.
But as I searched I found LOTS of references to "the Purple Brain": Check this Google Search: typical of Team Bush, they hijack a perfectly good term - like "No Child Left Behind" - and pervert it into something horrible...like No Child Left Behind.
Same with the Purple Brain. Go check it out.
To be openly disrespectful and to lampoon this new film before it comes out (I can't wait to see it) I'll close with a reference to the One-Eyed, One-Horned Flying Purple People Eater.
I strongly recommend that people who are still unschooled in the realities check out Ron Mann's GRASS. It's an excellent overview of the evolution of modern reefer madness. It is quite entertaining but if you pay close attention, it will piss you off.
And whatever you do, DON'T believe a thing that John Walters has to say. He's a highly paid professional liar in an Administration defined by high-paid professional liars.