Recently, a desperate and unprincipled President Joe Biden (whose own son nearly destroyed his life due to addiction to marijuana and cocaine) appeared on the often-degenerate Howard Stern radio show in an attempt to salvage his sinking political campaign. Trying to appear cool and attract younger voters after his unconstitutional student loan forgiveness failure, the “Doctor of Deception” is now attempting to declassify marijuana. What’s next, giving away weight-loss gummies?
Franklin Graham, who could have ruined his life through marijuana and being a self-described “hellraiser” who got thrown out of high school and college, now warns us of deceptive and dangerous drugs, saying, “Drug addiction has become virtually an epidemic in cities and towns, rural and urban, across America.”
Making marijuana mainstream is the goal of aggressive advocates of marijuana legalization. After all, they tell us, smoking weed is “safe, harmless and fun.”
Hollywood liberals are almost obsessed with reefer madness as pot-centric shows propagandize children and youth. Cannabis comedies are coming at us at breakneck speed. Now the Drug Enforcement Administration proposes its biggest policy changes in 50 years, lowering marijuana from Schedule 1 to Schedule 3 to remove the stigma and rake in more revenue.
Today the THC (the chemical that gives pot its high) in cannabis is different than that of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Then it was 2%, now it’s over 15%. Documentaries reveal that Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, Carlos Santana and Justin Bieber all started on a road to destruction by toking a joint. Santana and Bieber survived; the other two are dead.
Remember the Trojan Horse?
The phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” has relevance here. Just like the Greek army destroyed Troy through subterfuge in 1200 B.C., marijuana advocates are doing the same with their seductive logic.
In Homer’s epic “Odyssey,” Greek soldiers were unable to get into the seemingly impenetrable city of Troy for over a decade so they pretended to sail away, leaving a victory trophy of a giant hollow wooden horse for their victors. The gullible people of Troy pulled it inside, and as they slept, Greek soldiers inside the horse came out, opened the gates and the rest of their army returned under the cover of night to destroy the city.
The Trojan horse symbolizes a deception in which an unsuspecting people, not vigilant, lets an enemy slip in to bring destruction. Because the targeted group is more dumb than discerning, its people suffer serious consequences.
Consider Consequences
“Cool” hipster parents shrug off the dangers of weed, some even indulging themselves in secret. One day their kids enter their teens, start experimenting with drugs, and Dad and Mom have second thoughts.
Their once spry and sharp-thinking child starts displaying some telltale danger signs:
- Grades start dropping.
- Personality changes: nervousness, lying.
- Accidents at home and on the road with those suspicious new friends.
- Money mysteriously missing.
- Mood swings: withdrawn, fidgety.
Time to Wake Up and Wise Up
In just one year, per the Journal of the American Medical Association, nearly 100,000 children lost a parent to drug use and accompanying gang violence.
When marijuana proponents glorify drugs and celebrate its “harmless,” even having “beneficial” effects, we need to reject their fallacious reasoning. Dr. Ed Gogek, an addiction psychiatrist, said in The New York Times: “I’ve spent 25 years as a doctor treating drug abusers, and I know their games. They are excellent con artists.” He went on to call marijuana activists “phony scientists,” adding:
For years they claimed pot was good for glaucoma and never apologized when research found it could actually make glaucoma worse! They still insist weed isn’t addictive, despite every addiction medicine society saying it is. They even produced their own flawed scientific studies supposedly proving that medical marijuana laws don’t increase use among teenagers, when almost all the evidence is just the opposite. … It sends the message that weed is harmless, even though research shows that teenagers who use it regularly do worse in school, are twice as likely to drop out and earn less as adults. Teenage use has been shown to permanently lower IQ.
Drug addiction to substances such as marijuana, heroin, cocaine and opioids is a serious public health crisis, claiming nearly 100 people each day in the U.S.
While marijuana usage and addiction are often minimalized in public debate, honest individuals don’t discount it but identify it as a gateway drug that puts people on a path to addiction and stronger intoxicants.
In 2020 Oregon jumped on the bandwagon and officially decriminalized drugs, but now the state’s governor has signed a law to recriminalize drug possession because in one year alone, overdose deaths doubled. In addition, Canada just made public drug use illegal again.
The National Institute of Health makes it clear: “One in six youth who try marijuana before age 18 will either abuse it or will become addicted.” Those are dangerous odds. Is this really what we want for our children and grandchildren?
Warning to the Wise
Marijuana easily becomes habit forming in the lives of vulnerable, impressionable young people. Listen to the words of Jack Smith, president of Teen Challenge USA Missouri, representing the most successful ministry bringing deliverance to thousands of drug-addicted young people for over 40 years: “Our experience is that marijuana is a gateway drug leading to harder and more damaging drugs. Well over half our students indicate the first drug they really were involved with was marijuana.”
Legalization of marijuana puts people on the road to destruction. Don’t be taken in by this Trojan horse; it’s downright dumb and dangerous.
Pot Proponents Are Wrong
Throughout our history there have been individuals advocating certain drugs later proven to devastate lives, marriages and families. Think about just a few:
- Thalidomide was promoted as a wonder drug to help women experience better pregnancies until over 3,500 severely deformed babies were born in the early ’60s, and it was pulled off the market.
- Cigarettes were promoted as healthy and relaxing by doctors and superstar icons like Mickey Mantle, Clark Gable, Bette Davis and an actor named Ronald Reagan. Fred Flintstone even puffed cigarettes in cartoons for kids until tobacco’s cancer-causing elements were exposed.
- Doctors okayed heroin and cocaine as nonaddictive drugs prescribed for ailments, especially as a cough remedy, 100 years ago. Major corporations advertised heroin-laced products and cocaine toothache drops. Now we rightfully label them as lethal and illegal.
- Smokeless chewing tobacco has been a popular part of major-league baseball for decades. After Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn died of salivary gland cancer from using the product, Major League Baseball executives finally enacted the first ban of smokeless tobacco, the “Tony Gwynn Rule,” to save lives from the toxic substance.
Here’s the Deal: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration spokesman Mark Rosekind asks, “As marijuana is being legalized in more and more places, what does that mean for drivers, pedestrians and law enforcement?”
May we not be taken in by the deception of marijuana legalization.
To further your understanding, I encourage you to watch the six-minute video and read Chapter 29 of the Bullseye Challenge, which addresses this subject in a more in-depth way. Watch it as a family and follow it with discussion.
