Ohio Republican Senator JD Vance is running his Vice-Presidential campaign on an anti-marijuana platform that promotes old and worn-out fallacies about cannabis that were debunked before he was born.
Vance says marijuana causes violence and that it bears a direct relationship to violent crime, despite numerous refutations from historical and scientific studies. His attitude toward marijuana is depicted in a movie made of his life and directed by Ron Howard, Hillbilly Elegy, that portrays his mother’s heroin addiction. The picture’s focus is on her drug use rather than any information that might be useful in determining her overall mental condition. A mental disorder could explain her non-drug-related misbehavior in addition to her drug problem. Based on her movie depiction, one possible diagnosis might be bipolar disorder.
The movie script also reinforces a common marijuana myth. It has young JD refusing to try marijuana while telling his teenage stepbrother that marijuana is a gateway drug. If a gateway exists, it is drug illegality, not another drug. Legal alcohol or legal aspirin alone typically do not lead to heroin use. Illegal connections are needed to buy heroin.
Being anti-marijuana doesn’t benefit Senator Vance now that his home state of Ohio has legal recreational weed. His emphasis on prohibition alienates voters when he says that immigrants smuggle fentanyl into the U.S. where it’s used as a genocidal weapon aimed at MAGAs, and that Joe Biden ordered it to happen with his open border policies.
Senator Vance ignores the fact that fentanyl and methamphetamine trafficking arrests consist primarily of red state American citizens who own the expensive equipment and connections needed to move contraband. Given the lure of easy drug money, and with immigrants conveniently shouldering the blame for smuggled drugs, immigration is not their immediate concern. However, by linking legal or illegal immigrants to fentanyl ODs in the U.S., Vance promotes Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and the building of Trump’s ill-fated border wall.
Political novices and science illiterate demagogues like JD Vance are encouraged by moral mythologies that reinforce tribal fears of the other, and with it a fanatical desire to magically simplify political and social issues by prohibiting marijuana or supporting and voting tyrants into public office. Vance doesn’t get the idea that tyranny never lasts, that old tyrants die off, that the Big Lie has a time limit, and that it’s difficult in a democracy to predict how long a big lie will be believed. The shelf life of marijuana fallacies expired decades ago. Recent Pew Research polls indicate 88-percent of Americans believe marijuana should be legal for medical or recreational use.
Vance sounds a lot like that violent thug Jeff Landry. Landry used to be a narcotics officer and sheriff’s deputy, which should tell you that he is unfit for office.
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