Finding Negative Information about Cannabis
In the Trump era, being governor of a western state where marijuana is legal means protecting the local cannabis industry against threats from the federal Justice Department. But in Brauchler’s estimation, marijuana’s greatest threat is itself. And it might be, if Brauchler were the least bit honest. Instead, he’s running with a war on facts that’s even more dangerous.
Brauchler opposed Amendment 64 in 2012, and since then, as Colorado records more than $1.3 billion a year in commercial cannabis sales, he’s remained unswayed, mostly because he believes marijuana legalization has been a menace to society. “Whatever benefits there may be from the legalization of marijuana, eradicating violent crime associated with it is not one of them,” he said in a recent statement.
See here: Since Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, cultivators and dispensaries have been the target of “significant violent crime,” Brauchler claims in a recent post over at Westword. In that time, Brauchler’s area, home to 45 percent more people than the city of Denver, has seen no fewer than 11 murders “motivated by marijuana,” including an as-yet unsolved shooting death of a dispensary security guard.
“Those eleven homicides do not include the many more robbery, burglary, and attempted-murder cases in our community also motivated by marijuana,” says Brauchler. Across the state, he claims, criminal-justice colleagues across the state are “overwhelmed with trying to enforce the crimes involving marijuana.”
This is a near-perfect rote repetition of the Bible for the prohibition set, a certain report produced by the Rocky Mountain High-Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, or HIDTA. HIDTAs are initiatives overseen by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which is prohibited by act of Congress from supporting legalization. In most circles, this is known as an institutional bias. And the HIDTA report has alternately been blasted as “fake,” “dishonest,” or at the best, inconclusive in showing whether or not statistically significant but numerically very small increases — from a hundred to several hundred, for example — in emergency-room visits are caused by marijuana legalization.
What’s he doing? Why does he care so much about finding fault with legalization when far greater evils stalk the land? It’s called ideology, and in Brauchler’s case, it’s called failed ideology. He may win over some fellow anti-legalization zealots, but this is no way to run a political campaign. It’s also no way to behave as a public servant ostensibly in charge of the health and welfare of the public.
