Washington Lt. Gov. Brad Owen wants to put the hammer down on medical marijuana patientsBrad Owen exemplifies the kind of opportunistic, jingoistic career politician which represents the worst our system has to offer. Of the two kinds of politicians -- those who build hopes and those who feed fears -- Owen unfortunately falls in the latter category.
Brad Owen is lieutenant governor of a state which legalized medical marijuana nearly 11 years ago, but he has never respected the will of Washington's voters in that regard. He has repeatedly denied even that such a thing as medical marijuana exists, and has shown nothing but contempt and spite for the marijuana patients and providers in the Evergreen state.
His venomous contempt for medical marijuana in Washington -- which is supposed to have been a settled issue in this state for 11 years -- fairly drips from the words of a bulletin of misinformation and outright lies printed -- at taxpayers' expense, of course -- by his office:
"Marijuana as a medicine is the Trojan horse of the new millennium. The claim that marijuana can be used as medicine is proving to be one of the worst scams drug legalizers have perpetrated on the American people."
Owen has used the lieutenant governor's office as a bully pulpit to preach his science-denying, cynical creed of intolerance and repression when it comes to marijuana and its many medical uses. He has wasted the tax dollars of Washington's good citizens in printing and disseminating hysterical, fear-mongering lies regarding the medical use of pot.
Owen has toured the state musically traumatizing young and old with his horrid little anti-pot "rock band," twisting music into an ugly tool of right-wing propaganda and spreading lies smeared with the maleficent stink of his narrow ambition. He has tried to turn the citizens of our fair state one upon the other by using something as benign as cannabis as a wedge between those who know of its salutary medical effects and those who still harbor a superstitious fear of the herb.
His old-school Nixonian brand of marijuana intolerance has branded him as a rear-guard reactionary in the culture wars which unfortunately surround the marijuana issue, and in so doing he has incurred the wrath and scorn of Washington's weed community.
Brad Owen, since you are lieutenant governor of Washington, why don't you respect its laws? Why don't you respect the will of the people as expressed through passage of our medical marijuana law in 1998? Are you going to stop lying about medical marijuana?
Or will you continue telling the same old hateful lies? Will you continue victimizing patients who seek nothing more than relief from their terminal or debilitating conditions? Will the sick and dying, already facing quite enough stress, have to worry about your overzealous law enforcement thugs kicking in their doors for using a herb which was legalized for medical use in this state more than a decade ago?
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