Thread by @MyHarmReduction

I’ve been thinking about this piece for days. This is lazy and irresponsible reporting. And let me tell you why: nytimes.com/2019/03/27/nyr…

Hey reporters- if you’re going to mention people’s fears about impaired driving or hospitalizations, YOU MUST ALSO PRESENT FACTS. Especially if the fears are not grounded in facts.

Impaired driving cannot be accurately measured and there’s no evidence there are more people@driving under the influence.Traffic fatality data has not shown statistically significant increases. Yet where is this said in the article?

Which public health metrics are they loosely mentioning and where is the evidence? Although MJ-related hospital visits have increased, they are still a tiny percentage of all visits. Less than one percent of all poison control calls in Alaska & Washington involved MJ.

Why shouldn’t we expunge up to 5lbs of pot charges? Because selling that amount from a storefront would be legal, that’s why. We want to expunge records for acts that would now be legal for companies and corporations to do.

Also- his mentioning of the “dealer on the corner” trope is just tired and RACIST. He is dog whistling with that phrase and conjuring up images of the black street dealer w lbs of drugs to push on your kids.

Instead, people who get busted for lbs of MJ have it in their car, home, or some other indoor place. Do you know how bad you would stink if you were walking around with that on you? It’s not even real.

Okay, sure- underwhelming tax revenue could be seen as a bad thing. BUT IT ALSO MEANS LESS PEOPLE BOUGHT WEED THAN YOU PLANNED. If anything that means there wasn’t a huge increase in consumption. Isn’t that what you people who cry “public health” wanted?!?

And part of setting taxes so high was also to slow people from just running out there and smoking all the drugs? So maybe that actually worked? If anything, the unintended consequence of high taxes is that the illicit market still exists...but I digress.

And about the kids- can reporters please cite all the studies that use state-level difference-in-difference analyses to show that youth use rates haven’t increased? Heck, even national Monitoring the Future and NSDUH show the same thing. Kids aren’t smoking that much.

And can we actually stop trying to speak for black and brown communities? Or misrepresenting their real concerns about marijuana that involve policing, lasting criminal records, family separation, and other harsher realities?

And can we push back against using marijuana money to solve all our budgetary problems to begin with?! We just offered amazon no taxes to move to NYC. Our government has no will to get taxes from the actual places where this money should have come from all along.

Another important piece of information that is not discussed or challenged is the fact that BOTH counties have highest Mj arrest rates in the WHOLE STATE. @startsmartNY crunched the numbers: smart-ny.com/long-island-re…

And then we have this quote. This is the same guy who thinks decriminalization will end racist policing. And the same guy who hasn’t advocated for record expungement in the name of social justice either. You think he cares about social justice?

And this is when a reporter should highlight that RATES and RAW NUMBERS are two different things. The raw numbers are a fraction of what they were and it isn’t mentioned here. Less people are harmed. It’s a step in the right direction and police reform is needed too.

Back to the driving. Hey- you know that whether someone is sober or not, you can still ticket people for bad driving, right? Failure to stop at a light, going under/over speed limit, etc. Bad driving is bad driving. Ticket and fine people who drive badly.

Reporters- if politics is to blame, maybe put that closer to the top? Rather than hidden at the end after you failed to challenge 73 legalization myths and instead put them front and center in your piece?!