In Temecula, CA, a 17-year-old kid with Asperger’s, among other disabilities, made a new friend named “Daniel”.
His parents were thrilled. “He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock”, says Doug Snodgrass, the 17-year-old’s dad.
Turned out “Daniel” was actually “an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department who ‘hounded’ the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied — not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.”
The 17-year-old was arrested with 21 other students in a sting operation.
Judge Marian H. Tully ruled, however, that the 17-year-old was not able to be expelled from the school.
Within three days of the officer’s requests, [the] student burned himself due to his anxiety,” Tully said. “Ultimately, the student was persuaded to buy marijuana for someone he thought was a friend who desperately needed this drug and brought it to school for him.
However, the special-needs-kid was still forced to do community service and serve probation, which is just insulting. Meanwhile, “[t]he crime rate in Temecula is considerably higher than the national average across all communities in America”. What’s more of a danger, cops? Violent crime, robberies, or special needs kids giving an undercover cop $20 for weed?
Look—if you’ve literally got a perfect community, one of those places that haven’t seen a murder since 1957, where people leave their doors unlocked, then you’re allowed to start looking at petty stuff like this. No matter how low or high the crime rate is, however, prosecuting and attempting to expel special-needs kids for giving you $20 to “buy weed” shows some pretty screwed up priorities.
Under the Obama administration, the federal government classifies weed as the following:
Marijuana does not have a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States or a currently accepted medical use with severe restrictions. At this time, the known risks of marijuana use have not been shown to be outweighed by specific benefits in well-controlled clinical trials that scientifically evaluate safety and efficacy.
This is despite the fact that studies have come out showing that:
• Frequent cannabis smokers possess no greater lung cancer risk than do either occasional pot smokers or non-smokers
• Consistent use of cannabis…is associated with reduced risk factors for Type 2 diabetes
• Inhaling cannabis dramatically mitigates symptoms of Crohn’s disease
• Marijuana-like substances halt HIV infection in white blood cells
• Cannabinoids offer a likely treatment therapy for PTSD
These aren’t just “studies” done by your buddy’s cousin Jim in his garage either—these are legit university studies.
So in Obama’s government, a government led by a guy who used to be a major stoner, which proclaimed “[s]cience and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration”, why is weed condemned “to the same prohibitive legal status as heroin”?
There’s no excuse for this. And it just goes to show how pretending to be for science, and for loosening rules on weed, and publicly stating past weed use is all just a show for votes. Young voters are starting to realize that they were played—but far too late.
