Several Politicians Are Spreading Lies About Marijuana Deaths
Marijuana advocates are used to misinformation being spread by the anti-cannabis crowd. They lie and say that weed is addicting, that it’s a gateway drug, that it has no medical benefits, etc. But recently a handful of politicians are making up a new claim about marijuana: that it’s killing people.
A series of politicians and law enforcement officials have recently pushed the narrative that drug dealers are lacing marijuana with the opioid “fentanyl,” which is 50 times more powerful than heroin. They said that dealers were doing so in order to hook their users on marijuana and cause them to develop an addiction. But then it spread to politicians blaming overdose deaths on this fentanyl-laced marijuana.
The rumors seemed to begin when a coroner in Ohio blamed a string of overdose deaths on fentanyl-laced cocaine and marijuana. It then began to spread when Ohio Senator Rob Portman publicized the coroner’s findings. This led to other politicians and law enforcement officials spreading the fentanyl rumors, including police officers in Ontario, various law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and a Tennessee district attorney.
The issue is that there’s no evidence that this fentanyl lacing is actually occurring. Health officials in Ontario tested marijuana suspected of being laced and found no traces of the drug. Vice also ran an investigation into the rumors and consulted with multiple experts. They all said that the likelihood of finding marijuana laced with fentanyl is incredibly slim, and one former DEA official even questioned if it was even possible to do so.
Vice questioned the coroner, who said she actually hadn’t seen any cases of the laced marijuana, but had been told about it from Senator Portman. It seems the source of his information was a story about “false warnings” of laced marijuana.
So a Senator took a false story about laced marijuana, pretended it was true and then began to spread it around. This is the lengths anti-marijuana people go to fight back against legalization.
