Is Anti-Pot Propaganda Illegal?

Jacob Sullum | February 22, 2007

Americans for Safe Access has filed a federal lawsuit appealing the rejection of its Data Quality Act petition asking the Department of Health and Human Services to correct its misstatements about the medical utility of cannabis. Those misstatements are crucial to marijuana's classification as a Schedule I drug, which signifies that it has no accepted medical use and cannot be used safely even under medical supervision. ASA's innovative use of the Data Quality Act, which is supposed to assure the accuracy of scientific information disseminated by the government, is another example of how leftish drug policy activists are seeing the value in legal tools traditionally associated with the right. Until ASA's petition, I suspect, most drug policy reformers who were aware of the law would have viewed it as a weapon used by big business to attack perfectly legitimate regulations. Likewise, they probably considered federalism and its companion, a narrowly read Commerce Clause, unsavory until they needed them to defend state medical marijuna laws. The latter strategy did not work out so well, since even conservatives don't believe in federalism anymore. I hope the Data Quality Act gambit is more successful.

Comments

|2.22.07 @ 11:56AM|#

hmmm, I wonder if second hand smoke misstatements can be challenged under the same act

|2.22.07 @ 12:12PM|#

All propaganda should be illegal. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing BS propaganda ads on TV bought and paid for by myself with my tax money.

Our state recently passed a Smoke free law and prior to the law they ran ads with their BS lines about health and safety of the community and of course the children. Now even after the law was passed I am still hearing ads on radio that my tax money pays for telling me how great this new law is already for us all. While I am thinking fucking idiots you already got the law passed now you want to waste more money advertising its wonderful virtues. Its a LAW now, no need to pander to us anymore about how great it is.

They even have a woman playing the role of someone that is just WAY to over excited about the new law and waxes poetic about how wonderful it is and this and that. She sounds like the exact same woman with the same tone of voice as the woman they put on the state lottery commercials. The two different spots have the same exact feeling to them when heard, as if you had won a jackpot at the casino and won again with the smoking law.

Never once however has any of these ads mentioned how we are safer from the 100's of pounds of carcinegenic compounds our local area plants and refineries spew out into our air on a daily basis. What about these 2nd hand polutatants makes them any safer or more tolarable than 2nd hand smoke? Especially considering their level of toxicity is much greater than any cigarette. Nope not a word, so take a deep breath and feel good about this new law, just make sure you filter out all the other more harmful pollutants on your own when doing so.

According to EPA regs only when a plant releases more than 100 pounds of pollutants a day into the atmosphere do they have to even file a report. Then if over that weight limit, tsk tsk, they get a fine. Thus the government gets more money, we are no less polluted because of it and tomorrows another day thats the end of that.

I liken it to drug testing. A specimen of urine is considered positive for marijuana when the level reaches 50uG per ml. The EPA guidelines for everyones drinking water has an acceptable limit of up to 100uG of CYANIDE.

Now thats 50uG of an inert metabolite and your guilty of being a drug addict. Whereas 100uG of CYANIDE and you can drink it right up!

Ask your doctor if its right for you!

|2.22.07 @ 12:13PM|#

I think that all the defendants need to do is say that "Congress has found no medical use..." This is a true statement of fact, even though the congressional finding is baseless.

It seems to me that the real problem that needs to be solved is the problem of Congress making up its own contrafactual "facts," and those facts being treated as reality for legal purposes. Is there a way to sue congress, to force them to revisit bogus "findings"?

|2.22.07 @ 12:54PM|#

It seems to that in order for pot to be deemed to have no medicinal value that it would have to be possible to test it for such. At this time, very, very few agencies other than the government have actually been permitted to test it for any reason.

|2.22.07 @ 1:02PM|#

Poor use of "gambit" in this article. Acceptable, but see http://www.answers.com/gambit&r=67.

|2.22.07 @ 1:08PM|#

I hope the Data Quality Act gambit is more successful.

So do I. I also hope it rains Scotch. I figure the odds are about 50/50 on which happens first.

Once again Med Pot illustrates how batshit the drug warriors will go to preserve their paradigm. My biggest fear is that someone will bitch slap em and they'd back off to moonbat talk. Then the issue would go away and we'd still have to live under prohibition.

The thing that is going to kill MedMJ is big pharma. Once Pfizer is able to charge $10 a dose for some possessed, half-assed THC based pill, all that needs to be done is to have it included on Medicare Part whatever. And all the establishment on the left and right will have their cake. We'll still be fucked but only the libertarians will know or care.

|2.22.07 @ 5:23PM|#

So true that is the only reason for such ardent attacks against marijuana use as a medicine. Forget the fact that the person suffering says themselves it helps them, the fact that the pharma's aren't profitting from it is the problem.

We have a drug in developement to supposedly help opiate addicts get off the drugs. We have had methadone as this drug for some time now but it is now being abused itself more and more. So what do we do but come up with a 3rd drug to replace the second that replaced the 1st. The 1st was the only one not making pharma money so they much favor the other 2.

I call it re-inventing the wheel.

Between pharma profit lose and alcohol sales tax drops it will be hard to ever get it allowed for use as medicine much less recreation. To big on an industry surrounding the WoD to stop now, way to much money involved on both sides of the law. Problem being both sides profit off the law as it stands so it will be hard to change anything from the current norm without changing what is currently the normal pols we send to DC.

brucem|2.24.07 @ 6:18PM|#

Considering the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights do not apply to drug laws and their enforcement, I fail to see how the Administrative Procedure Act and Data Quality Act would remotely apply. The "drug exception" to the law makes such lawsuits nearly frivilous.