As the California campaign to tax and regulate cannabis heads into the final stretch, it's time for some of the crazier lies to emerge from the opposition. Backed by the California Beer and Beverage Distributors, no on 19 group “Public Safety First” employed the powerful Christian fundamentalist organization Vision to America. the anti-gay rights group asked its hundreds of thousands of believers nationwide to “help us get the word out about our campaign to defeat legalized recreational marijuana in schools.”

The letter read: “Dear Supporter, It's September again so it's back-to-school season. But this year is a little different ... This year voters will decide if those that work with our youth have the right to smoke recreational marijuana on the job.”



Actually, Prop 19 does not permit employees to come to work high, Prop 19's author states. The same argument was made against Prop 215, the medical marijuana initiative, and it also proved false.



Public Safety First further ratchets up the fear of parents by saying, “If Prop. 19 passes this fall, your child's school will be dramatically transformed. Is my child's bus driver high? Is the school's crossing guard stoned? ... legal drug dealers may be coming to a neighborhood near you. With an immediate contribution of $50, $100, $250, or more, you can help us get the word out about our campaign to defeat legalized recreational marijuana in schools.”



Prop 19 proponent and former San Jose police chief Joseph McNamara holds a Public Policy Ph.D. from Stanford. He says Public Safety First has their story backward. Kids can get bud easier than beer, because alcohol sellers must require identification or they can lose their livelihood. As long as the widely used herb is illegal, pot dealers have the profits and incentives to recruit high schoolers.



Furthermore, the King James version of Genesis 1:26 notes humanity gets “dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth”. We're no biblical scholars, but it sounds like that technically includes herbal remedies dating to the time Genesis was written.

