Pot Halloween-Scare is a Monstrous Lie

What better than a good scare for Halloween 2016? We’ve got it in Orlando. Never mind Halloween Horror Nights at Universal, SeaWorld’s Halloween Spooktacular, the Spooky Empire Horror Convention, or even Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom. Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demmings held a news conference on Monday October 24^th with the express purpose of frightening the wits out of Central Floridians with the alarm that “Marijuana-laced candy might”…MIGHT…”be put in trick-or-treat bags for Halloween”. Not that they would, just that they might. And here’s the really neat trick. It’s all because medical marijuana could be legalized on November 8^th, fully a week after Halloween.

So a proposed constitutional amendment that hasn’t passed yet, although it's pretty certain it will, is the cause for all the alarm by Sheriff Demmings. When politely asked for examples of when and where children had received marijuana-laced candies…even in states where marijuana is legal, Demmings couldn’t offer any. He admitted that “even though the potential for the marijuana edibles appearing this year may be somewhat minimal, it is still a threat in our community.” Yes, just like the threat to our community of being gunned down by rogue police officers or having an engine fall off of an airliner on the approach to OIA and killing someone. Possibility equals actuality in Demmings playbook. But is Sheriff Demmings going to protect us from either of those two possibilities, as well? Of course not!  

It's better to scare the voters with fictional pot-laced candy horror stories.

            Demmings also added this dire warning “I believe the passage of the amendment could be problematic and would negatively impact the overall public safety of our community.” How will its passage on November 8^th harm the kids on October 31^st? Do the pot candy pushers have a time machine to go back over a week from when medical marijuana is legalized on November 8^th, or sometime thereafter, with reams of the now-legal pot-infused candy to foist on unsuspecting kids?

But drug warriors like Demmings insist it's better this way.

            Tellingly, this whole Chicken Little press conference was hosted by the anti-medical marijuana group “Don’t Let Florida Go to Pot”, a sky-is-falling local group from Pine Hills that claims, without any evidence, that people in other states are putting edible marijuana in packages that look appealing to children. Demmings called these phantasms that are packaging the pot candies in other states “mean-spirited people” who are just trying to “create confusion and injure our children.” Demmings finally made the claim that Colorado is where kids might have gotten the pot edibles while trick-or-treating. The Associated Press had reported on an incident in 2014…yes, two years ago…where eight kids in Colorado ate some pot brownies, but it turned out to be a case of bad parenting at an adult party where the brownies were left right where the kids in the house could find them. None of the kids got them while going door to door. That was the only incident the Associated Press found. Marijuana was legalized in the state in 2012. If it was such a danger, one would think there would be hundreds of stories like that by now. There are not.

The HELL with saving him...we've got to defend the kids who are not being offered pot.

            But why let the facts get in the way? It serves Sheriff Demmings anti-drug agenda, (where Orange County is enriched by continuing its drug war efforts) better by scaring everyone with an imaginary monster than to admit his concerns are baseless.