State Legislators Are Warned of ‘Addiction-for-Profit’ Lobby Pushing Pot on Unborn Children

April 22, 2019 (EIRNS)—Former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (RI) sent an open letter to legislators in states where legalizing marijuana is actively being considered—New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Connecticut, Illinois, and New York—warning that marijuana legalization is being driven by “addiction-for-profit companies.... We must put public health and safety—and our kids—ahead of the interests of Big Marijuana.”

Consider the implications of the following horrors, among others, that Kennedy cited, as resulting from legalization:

• Marijuana being sold now contains up to 40% of its mind-altering chemical, THC.
  
  
• Pregnant mothers are being encouraged to use marijuana for morning sickness by “legal” pot shops. A 2018 Washington University study showed marijuana use during pregnancy increased 75% in the U.S. between 2002 and 2016. A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA Psychiatry) in March 2019 found that psychosis developed in children whose mothers used marijuana during pregnancy at a slightly higher rate than in children whose mothers had not.
  
  
• Rates of marijuana use by 12- to 17-year-olds are going up in “legal” states, as compared to falling rates in non-legal states (no surprise).
  
  
• Pot distributors in legal states are selling such marijuana “edibles” as gummy bears, ice cream, sodas, cookies, etc. in cute little packages which appeal to children.

It is not just beer and tobacco companies that are getting in on the lucrative legal marijuana market, Kennedy reports. The former CEO of opioid-pushing Purdue Pharma, John H. Stewart, now heads a top marijuana-selling company in Canada.

Meanwhile, the commercial pot buzzards expect that this year Congress will pass a law ending federal action against marijuana, letting the states decide what they please. Thirteen Democrats and an equal number of Republicans introduced the STATES—Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States—Act in the House at the beginning of April, and would-be Presidential impeacher, Elizabeth Warren, and Colorado’s Cory Gardner have introduced its companion bill in the Senate.