Anti-marijuana quack Dave Weldon to take over CDC

Few major hospitals receiving Dave Weldon’s job resume would hire him. Few patients would trust him as their doctor. Yet, if confirmed, former congressional representative and physician Dr. David Weldon (R-Fla.) will head the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), becoming the overlord of a government agency whose function is to protect people from pandemics and other illnesses.

Weldon has some hang-ups regarding marijuana, along with several other things. He sees cannabinoids as medically ineffective. He said marijuana’s medical use is a form of “lunacy”. He is anti-abortion. He is an anti-vaxxer. Contrary to established medical science he believes thimerosal used as a preservative in vaccines leads to autism. Ironically, marijuana has recently shown promise in reducing symptoms of autism. Weldon rejects therapies that successfully treat certain cancers and disorders of the blood and the immune system because the treatments employ human stem cells. Stem cells have the potential to assist in the treatment of diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and spinal cord injuries, unless research funding is cut off.

After he left Congress, Dr. Weldon returned to his medical practice and continued to be involved in community and faith-based initiatives. His elevation to a possible CDC directorship hinges entirely on his close association with a politically styled religious group calling itself the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). The NAR was founded in the 1990s. Some of its members are Pentecostalists who believe in faith healing. Firebrand prosperity-gospel preacher Paula White is a charismatic evangelical pastor associated with the NAR. As President-elect Donald Trump’s current spiritual advisor or guru, White has a Rasputin-like influence over Trump. She boasts she will bring in angelic reinforcements to outlaw democracy and create an American theocracy. Anti-marijuana prohibitionist and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for U.S. Attorney General, is tied to the NAR. So is Ann Coulter. Other NAR notables include Lauren Boebert, a supporter of marijuana for medical use only, and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who believes marijuana smokers are “zombies”.

True believers in marijuana’s satanic powers are right about one thing. Despite all angelic reinforcements to the contrary, marijuana, the Devil’s Lettuce, is capable of changing people’s minds about myths and fallacies. The plant achieves this miracle by generating faith-based laws that lead to prohibitionists vilifying themselves and ultimately their ideologies by their support of marijuana drug enforcement, or employment within its ranks. Not all conservatives fall into the trap.

In the early 1970s conservative commentator William F. Buckley positioned himself and his sailboat on the high seas outside the three-mile limit of U.S. legal authority and tried marijuana for the first time. Buckley’s one and only cannabis experience was much ado about nothing: “…it didn’t do a thing for me.” Nor did it do him any harm, like getting him arrested. A conservative is commonly characterized as being a stick-in-the-mud, however Buckley quickly changed his mind about marijuana and went on to publicly advocate for its decriminalization.