VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Axw307LCs04&ab_channel=TheHill
Watch out! According to Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi, all hell would break loose if Mississippians were to smoke up to 3.3 million joints per day.
Wait…what? Where did he get the 3.3 million joints per day from? He got it from an imaginary scenario based on the current medical marijuana bill they are working on in the state. On Dec. 20th, he answered a question about the bill in which he began rambling on about hypotheticals and created statistics out of thin air. To be honest, it’s one of the most visceral displays of non-cannabis smokers conjecturing about what it means to use cannabis for medical or even recreational purposes.
Furthermore, throughout his televised appearance, he used the words “I believe” and “I guess” in relaying his opinion which makes one thing – do you elect officials to “guess” about how things “might” play out? Probably not. Our elected “leaders” are supposed to be the people who has access to the data us peasants don’t have and make decisions that would benefit the bottom-line of most of their constituents.
Instead, we get people like Reeves who pulls imaginary stats out of his ass to block something that he believes “would have a detrimental” effect on it. Did he ever decide to do some serious investigation on the subject matter? Of course not, that would be the smart thing to do. He’d rather spew out stale decades old reefer madness to support his hypothesis.
In today’s article – we’re going to be tearing Gov. Tate Reeves a new asshole (figuratively) by using your run-of-the-mill logic and reasoning. Let’s get started.
“They want you to call it medical marijuana”
Right out the gate the Governor attempts to degrade the medicinal benefits of cannabis by saying “the marijuana bill….THEY want you to call it a medical marijuana bill, but I’ll call it what it is…a marijuana bill…”
He subsequently then praised the legislaTORS who are drafting up the bill on how they cut back on some of the things he deemed “too potty” for Mississippi. The truth of the matter is that even recreational cannabis can be seen as medicinal if it helps individuals deal with stress and anxiety, manage their pain, and help them get to sleep.
Of course, for people like Reeves they would much rather have you take pharmaceuticals to deal with all of those issues, which can have some severe side effects. He believes that he knows more about your body than you do, because you know…”science”.
“If 10% of Mississippians got a marijuana card” – MAGICK!
Next, Reeves started comparing Oklahoma to Mississippi and noted that 10% of Oklahomans are enrolled into a medical marijuana program, and if his state were to follow suit – it would tally up to 300,000 medical marijuana patients within the state.
This is where the math magic begins…
Now that we have a number of potential users, let’s factor in that the bill “as it currently stands” he smirked…would allow you to get up to 3.5 grams per day.
Then he said probably one of my favorite lines a politician has ever said;
“The proponents of this bill love to talk about crayons and they love to talk about…uh…a lot of things that nobody fully understands… - Gov. Tate Reeves
You don’t fully understand crayons? What’s not to understand? I haven’t even seen what the “proponents of the bill” had to say, but based on what Reeves is talking about, I could infer that they were using crayons as a means of displaying how much the cannabis would be in terms of weight and size. It would be a visual example of the amount.
Nonetheless, Reeves had a better example.
He went and took the estimate that the average joint weighs about 0.3 grams, which means that according to his estimates, 3.5 grams would come out to roughly 10-11 joints. With some simply multiplication and using his projected estimate of potential users in his state – that would equate to 3.3 million joints a day.
That’s 99 Million a month! And 1.18 BILLION JOINTS PER YEAR!
“How could that possibly be medical” or so he claimed.
The problem with his math…
The thing about math is that it only requires a singular change in a variable to create the outcome. First of all, Reeves is using the estimate that a joint weighs about 0.3 grams, which is a number that might be officially accepted however isn’t congruent with industry standards. The average joint for a consumer usually is similar to that of a cigarette, which sits at about 0.8-0.9 grams. That would drop the number of joints to 3-4 per day – not 10-11.
Secondly, I have been consuming cannabis for over twenty years and while there may have been a time where I smoked more than 3-4 joints per day, I don’t think I have ever been able to consistently smoke 10-11 joints per day. These days I smoke between 1-2 a day and some days I don’t even smoke.
When it comes with medical cannabis, the consumption is usually higher – but that doesn’t mean that they will also be consistently smoking 10-11 joints per day.
The Problem with his claims
Reeves also claimed that there will be fewer “able-bodied” people who would be eligible to get hired because they would either;
-
Be too lazy because they are stoners
-
Not pass a drug test
Of which A is statistically false as there is no reduction in productivity in states that have legalized recreational cannabis. In fact, people take fewer sick days when they have medical marijuana available.
And in terms of B, you solve that by making workplace discrimination illegal against cannabis users. Not to mention that the presence of a medical cannabis marketplace will also create more jobs.
He also said that he thinks “crime would go up” – which once more, is not true. There is actually evidence that dispensaries reduce crime because you remove the market dynamics from the black market and move it into a controlled regulated market.
Bottom Line
When you have leaders that are obviously biased towards a particular narrative – you get people like Gov. Reeves who pulls out stats from hypothetical realities that is not on par with reality. If you’re in Mississippi – do you really want that guy running things? Reeves is an example of how cannabis policy and prohibition continued for so long…maybe it’s time we stop electing these people?
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