About 88 percent of Floridians support medical marijuana, but a group of hardened drug warriors including former Drug Czar officials and hyper-conservative donors isn’t going to just let the first state in the south fall to cannabis.

The Group No on 2 is distributing some pretty outrageous scare advertisements promising that Florida’s daughters will be date-raped with the help of THC-infused pot cookies, and that “teens will be able to legally purchase the drug without their parents’ consent.”

The ads depict scary-looking crumble bums and read “Drug Dealer Loophole” and say that “Pot Shops Will be Everywhere”.

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A couple thoughts:

1) Under failed marijuana prohibition, teens have had access to pot for decades. Date rapists prefer legal alcohol, and prescription pills.

2) The “Teens will be able to purchase the drug” is a canard. Eighteen and nineteen year-old ‘teens’ are also ‘adults’ — who are old enough to get prescribed OxyContin at one of Florida’s notorious pill mills, make a choice about dying in Iraq, or obtain marijuana for their PTSD after their buddies die in our next Florida-enabled international quagmire.

3) No on 2 allows for people who cannot grow or obtain cannabis to chose a caregiver to do it for them. So you could be a caregiver for your mother with breast cancer — yes, even if you had a past felony for selling marijuana.

4) As for “pot shops will be everywhere” — that’s just an outright lie. Amendment 2 states, “The Department of Health shall register and regulate centers that produce and distribute marijuana for medical purposes and shall issue identification cards to patients and caregivers.” It’s hard to see how the Dept. of Health in its regulatory capacity would allow for the proliferation of centers that dispense cannabis.