Why we call it "Madness" - Reefer Madness in Modern Times
‘Reefer Madness’ is a term that entered into the psychocosm of humanity in 1936 and originally was designed to scare people on the dangers of cannabis. While the film did achieve its purpose to sway conservative puritans to outlaw cannabis – it also managed to capture the imagination of cannabis users – who saw the film as a joke.
Why – because Reefer Madness is littered with comical overacting of people going cartoonishly insane after smoking “The Devil’s Lettuce”. Of course – anyone who has ever smoked weed knew that cannabis simply doesn’t make people go “mad”.
However – that might not entirely be true either. There is strong evidence to suggest that cannabis has the potential to make people go mad – ESPECIALLY IF THEY DON’T CONSUME IT.
That’ right – while Reefer Madness wanted to show us that cannabis users are the deviants of society, it was in fact non-users who have always displayed acts of insanity.
Let’s quickly go down a list of some of the more notable “insane actions of non-cannabis users when trying to enforce cannabis prohibition”.
Lying to the Public about the effects of cannabis `
Spraying Paraquat on ‘Wild Cannabis Crops’ that lead to the deaths of Americans
Suffocating Monkeys to Prove that “Cannabis kills brain cells” [it didn’t]
Throwing Terminally Ill Patients in Jail
Funding Wars in places like Colombia and Mexico
Forgiving Banks for laundering money from Cartels and Terrorists
These are just a few of the atrocities committed in the name of cannabis prohibition. We didn’t even mention civil asset forfeiture and countless other insane things.
The Madness Continues
While many people think that Reefer Madness is a thing of the past – the truth of the matter is that it’s still going strong these days. In fact – The Hartes experienced firsthand the insanity that is the War on Drugs [which should technically be called The War on Marijuana].
In April of 2012, a bunch of armor-clad sheriff’s deputies stormed the house of Bob and Addie Harte looking for a cannabis garden. In Kansas, growing your own cannabis is definitely ‘not cool’.
The only problem with all of this was that Bob nor Addie grew cannabis at all – they grew hydroponic tea. And in fact – the mere act of buying hydroponic equipment was the reason why the Harte’s were in the police’s cross airs.
The reason we’re only talking about it today is because of the raid – the Harte’s sued the police department and spent 7-years in litigation. This finally ended in 2019 where the Police Department were forced to pay the family $150,000.
But let’s take a step back and see how this went.
The reason why the Harte’s became the target of police harassment when Sgt. James Wingo of the Missouri Highway Patrol saw Bob walk into a gardening store in Kansas City [According to Reason]. Bob was planning on starting a hydroponic garden in his house – you know, some father-son bonding time. However – For Wingo, this was obviously a smokescreen mean to hide Harte’s nefarious plot – to become the world’s biggest drug kingpin!
After 8-months of sitting on the Tip of Wingo, the County’s anti-drug taskforce added them on a roster of “to-be raided” spots prior to April 20th, 2012. However – the task force never did a background check. If they would have gone through the trouble they would have seen that the Harte’s had a clean criminal record and a little more digging would have revealed that they had both worked with the CIA and had the highest level of security clearance.
If Bob was determined to be a drug kingpin – he definitely was committed to keeping his public record clean - especially after spending decades working for the CIA. If you haven’t picked up on it yet – this was sarcasm.
However – the real insanity of the story comes after the cops raided the Harte’s home and found “wet green vegetation” which eventually were described as “marijuana plant material”. This was simply tea – but to Wingo and his crew – “THE DEVIL’S LETTUCE!”
A Lab tech, who consulted on the raid said that the tea looked nothing like marijuana. A Drug Field Test – who are notably unreliable – confirmed “THC” yet that was the only test conducted. There was no follow up. According to Frank Denning – the sheriff who authorized the raid – said that he had never heard of Drug Field Tests to produce false-positives. It seems though that Denning is incapable of reading since there is a Warning Label on the kit itself that says it can produce “False Positives”.
So either Denning is an incompetent idiot who should not be a sheriff OR he blatantly lied which should disqualify him of being a sheriff.
A Silver Lining…
"There was no probable cause at any step of the investigation," a federal appeals court judge concluded in 2017. "The defendants in this case caused an unjustified governmental intrusion into the Hartes' home based on nothing more than junk science, an incompetent investigation, and a publicity stunt."
This was the epic conclusion of yet another gargantuan Clusterfuck sponsored by your friends at Drug Prohibition INC.
Reefer Madness does not happen to those who consume cannabis – it only affects those who do not consume it and believe it to be “evil”. While the conclusion of the Harte Case was positive – how many other people are now in jail because of these “comical blunders?” How many people are sitting currently in jail for a little bit of cannabis?
Is the punishment for the crime or the insanity of law enforcement justified on the alleged “risk” of smoking cannabis? Of course not – anyone who would disagree are either lying to themselves or a government shill making money off the illegality of cannabis.
Either way – in a just society, these kind of things are not to be tolerated and if you can’t see that this system needs a major reset – you might be suffering from “The Madness” – The Reefer Madness.
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