From coal mining operations to tobacco firms to all method of polluting industries, there’s a lengthy, lengthy record of enterprises which were run by grasping individuals who care extra about income than the well being and welfare of their fellow residents.
So, why ought to the marijuana business be any completely different?
In 2012, Washington voters legalized hashish on this state and, in a short time, the hashish business sprouted like a area of well-fertilized marijuana vegetation. Legalization happened due to the absurdity of arresting individuals for rising, promoting and possessing a leisure drug that was so generally utilized by so many individuals with so little critical hurt.
Sadly, the pot entrepreneurs weren’t content material with merely promoting the groovy grass that so many people bear in mind from our youthful days. To extend gross sales and income, they wanted to innovate and provide you with new variations of their product. And that’s the place greed has overridden social duty.
Now, an individual can go to a pot store and purchase merchandise which have a THC focus of practically 100%. That efficiency is vastly higher than the 15% THC focus in an precise marijuana plant — fashionable vegetation that have already got an even bigger kick than the comparatively tame weed that gave a buzz to denizens of Haight Ashbury again in 1967’s Summer time of Love.
Considerable medical and scientific proof signifies that frequent marijuana customers of all ages are sometimes experiencing destructive results from stronger pot, however the actually scary analysis has uncovered the horrible injury being achieved to the creating brains of youthful individuals. A College of Washington examine discovered that adolescents and younger adults who use excessive efficiency marijuana merchandise should not solely prone to grow to be addicted however have a sharply elevated threat of schizophrenia or different psychotic problems.
This isn’t what Washington residents voted for. We have already got a psychological well being disaster on this state, and we don’t want the hashish business to make issues even worse by promoting a radically altered drug simply to allow them to get richer.
We’ve seen this situation earlier than with Massive Tobacco. It’s time for state legislators to cease taking marketing campaign donations from this new avaricious business and begin placing laborious limits on a harmful product.
See extra of David Horsey’s cartoons at: st.information/davidhorsey
View different syndicated cartoonists at: st.information/cartoons
Editor’s observe: Seattle Instances Opinion not appends remark threads on David Horsey’s cartoons. Too many feedback violated our neighborhood insurance policies and reviewing the handfuls that have been flagged as inappropriate required an excessive amount of of our restricted employees time. You possibly can remark by way of a Letter to the Editor. Please e-mail us at letters@seattletimes.com and embrace your full title, deal with and phone quantity for verification solely. Letters are restricted to 200 phrases.
