This is in response to the “Know the facts of Marijuana aka Cannabis” political ad submitted by the Republican Party of Alamosa (ARP) on Oct 20, 2017.

First of all — the name of the plant is cannabis, it is aka marijuana due to Harry Anslinger in 1937 trying to make it sound “Mexican” to incite hate for the plant and tie it to the fault of immigrants. This list of untruths and outright lies is a result of cherry picked data that leads me to conclude that this is nothing more than pure old fashioned yellow journalism revived for 2017. These two cherry picked references and opinion filled bullet points they provided were from non scientific journals written by people who have no formal research to stand by and to top it off, the website, www.drugfreeworld.org, is a sensationalized, overdramatized, fearmongering, authoritarian effort to lump the well documented healing plant cannabis with all other street and synthetic drugs that are obviously very harmful to the body and mind. This ad was a desperate attempt at Reefer Madness that many can see through. This publication only hurt the ARP reputation as a pragmatic or sensible group willing to take on social matters in a practical way.

The Republican Party of Alamosa should be ashamed for being so irresponsible and condescending to think that people would believe this laundry list of lies. Especially the points about marijuana being equated to cigarettes, completely false and very easy to debunk!!! I have shown this article to many people and they are also enraged that it was published but then again, if you have money, you can say whatever you want and we know this from the Citizen’s United mess. Well guess what? We are Citizens for Cannabis and we will fight for truth and science to be the basis for conversations and publications, and that is something you can believe in. Until then, I encourage voters to do your own research and avoid the pitfalls of reading other people’s cherry picked data or that contain other obvious logical fallacies to prop up their outdated and unreliable data and opinions. Until then, I hope everyone who found that list detestable will vote “Yes for Cannabis” and prove that our city leaders can manage to open a few shops and that we will not self implode due to a voting process. I know quite a few Republicans who were alienated by that article, way to go guys, keep on dividing your party and maybe there will not be anyone left that is reputable to help run our community that is a Republican. Instead of party focus, maybe we should just elect people who are committed to our community and prove it by establishing policies that are based on values like truth, justice, mercy and opportunity.  

Sincerely,
Shanna Hobbs
Citizens for Cannabis