In the upper-middle class town of Flower Mound, in a building surrounded by no less than a dozen occupied police vehicles, with no less than 10 police officers in person around the front door and perimeter, and a narcotics dog sniffing around, the Flower Mound Area Republican club met and hosted a four person panel titled: “Marijuana: Meltdown of Our Country.” The quest speakers included (below, from left to right) Denton County Sheriff William Travis, Juvenile Court Judge Kimberly McCary, Winning the Fight Executive Director Kathy B. O’Keefe and Flower Mound Police Chief Andy Kancel.

Before the meeting was a buffet and that is where security was the tightest. Even though he was on the list future Denton County Sheriff candidate Randy Butler was denied admission by Sheriff Travis. And NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) lawyer David Slone (in full “Legalize It” regalia) was also asked to leave the event. I too was denied entry but waited around and was one of the 3 admitted who were extra (I’m happy to say that Randy Butler also made it inside!)

After the club business, they mentioned that they had expected disturbance from protesting groups, which never happened. And they implemented a new rule for the club banning photos/video and live streaming. Finally, the presentation commenced, each person would get 1o minutes, and then a question and answer section but each person in the audience would only get one question, and the topics of legislation and medical was strictly forbidden. The theme was clearly stated as Marijuana and children (families were encouraged to attend).

Travis went first, gave the only Power Point of the evening, and the only presentation with citations. His speech mostly focused on the increasing potency, and thus danger, of marijuana. He mentioned its addictive nature, its ability to cause withdrawal, its potential for overdose, and how it leads to dropping out of school. To his credit, he took a little bit of time to find some citations, but many were questionable in reliability because they were from blogs. But his most violent and damning slide, which focused on Butane concentrates, and used the word “overdose,” was suspiciously devoid of any citation, reliable or not. While he skipped over that word in favor of getting to the next slide, that topic will come up again.

Next spoke the Flower Mound Police Chief Andy Kancel. He had the most dosel and believable presentation of the evening. Mostly he spoke about Flower Mound arrest statistics (which apparently haven’t really changed much in the past decade) and elaborated a bit on the differences in “pot from back when we were young.”

Third was Juvenile Court Judge Kimberly McCary who “spoke from her heart” and couldn’t count five “bad” kids in all of her 22 years experience. Her speech was literally from the mouths of babes, as that was the only source she chose to cite. Her job is to try minors, so everything she said was based on their word. First she feels like marijuana causes diseases and can bring out tendencies of mental illness, such as schizophrenia. She focused on mental illness for a big percentage of her presentation. Then it seems to her that the neighborhood drug dealers are lacing their products with Meth and/or LSD to out compete the dealer on the other corner. And finally her observations, and children’s testimonies confirm that kids are selling their bodies for the drug and being tricked into getting addicted by other substances. She concluded her speech by reading a testimony from a “well articulated” kid “in another state.” This well written self-evaluation told the story of getting caught with marijuana and other substances in his blood (from laced marijuana), “fearing” being kicked out of school and he clearly learned his lesson.

Winning the Fight Executive Director Kathy B. O’Keefe gave her speech last. Her inspiration comes from the personal loss of her son who overdosed on a long list of drugs, most notably heroin and marijuana. Because of marijuana, the gateway to the more dangerous drugs was opened up and swallowed her son. She spoke very passionately about drug testing your kids (all attendees got complimentary drug tests) and being a strong enforcer.

After another reminder that zero questions about medical use or legislation would be entertained, the floor was opened up. My arm shot up and was given the first chance to speak. Though I really wanted to discuss a legislative action, I decided to ask Sheriff Travis about the word he included his slide show, “overdose.” “Please explain what that means.” I said. He started stumbling and muttering about the “heart going faster than it should,” and “the mind going faster than it should” I interrupted without the microphone “so, it’s killing kids?” All four speakers turned towards me and, seemingly in unison,dodged the question by saying “only one question per person.” I’ve never been more disappointed in a group of speakers. They ended the conversation there and moved to the next questions.

Besides a question about the correlation of the rise of synthetic drugs against harsher drug laws for their natural counterpart, which resulted in nothing more than simple “nos,” no other question challenged the speakers and they only asked further into testing their own kids. This wasn’t a crowd that would change their mind on this subject. The panelists won by instilling fear in the crowd who swallowed every outrageous statements hook, line, and sinker.

After NORML’s Vice President won the raffle (which was a safe to store your drugs in…I can’t make this up) the meeting adjourned and I had a brief moment to speak to both Sheriff Travis and Judge McCary.

I asked the judge about regulation. “You mentioned that beer is harder for high school students to get than marijuana, right?” She agreed. “And that is because it is highly regulated, sold by licensed persons to people only of a certain age or higher, right?” She also agreed. “Then why not treat marijuana the exact same way?” She babbled a bit about her priorities are about the children and I told her mine were as well, and that is why this would help prevent kids from getting the drug, keep drug dealers off the street, and also prevent people lacing their drugs. “Why wouldn’t this work?” She politely ended the conversation by saying that she was happy to live in a country where we could each have different opinions and talk about it. But she refused to talk about it.

At this point Sheriff Travis walked by and shook my hand. I couldn’t resist the chance to talk to him specifically about one fact that really bothered me in these speeches; cannabis laced with LSD. I asked what percentage of marijuana confiscated was laced with anything. He had no idea, and gave the excuse of switching labs to UNT, to “save taxpayer money.” This has been going on for the past year, and that particular statistic isn’t kept. Basically, according to his explanation, lab reports give a THC percentage, and then mention any other chemicals present. “You have found marijuana laced with LSD?” I asked and he confirmed it. We ended our conversation and I journeyed home.

I am awaiting a phone call from the UNT forensics lab to further answer my questions about this interaction. I am also waiting on Travis to email me his powerpoint. I doubt that is going to happen.