A pro-marijuana college professor pulled out a joint at the end of an interview Tuesday night with Fox News host Laura Ingraham, declaring that marijuana is not just for CNN.
The stunt by Temple University professor Chris Goldstein, a reference to CNN’s much-pilloried coverage of pot on New Year’s Eve, came at the end of a debate on “The Ingraham Angle” over legalized marijuana.
“I’m certainly concerned that almost 100 years of prohibition has set us far back as far as education and science goes,” Goldstein said.
He appeared untroubled by statistics Ingraham cited from the American Academy of Pediatrics — that 9 percent of those who try marijuana become addicted, a figure that rises to 17 percent for people who try at a young age, and 50 percent for those who use daily at a young age.
Will Jones, of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, told Ingraham that the nascent legal marijuana industry already is mimicking the tactics of the tobacco and alcohol industries.
“Our argument is that we don’t want to see an industry that’s going to profit off of addiction establish itself in our society,” he said.
Jones added that pot vendors are targeting minority communities in states where the drug has been made legal in recent years.
“It was very outrageous to see what I would call irresponsible journalism on behalf of CNN,” said Corinne Gasper, whose daughter died at the hands of an impaired driver who had used medical marijuana.
“There’s one pot shop for every 43 residents in some of those minority communities in Denver, Colorado, right now,” he said.
The CNN New Year’s Eve coverage included a reporter yucking it up in Denver, wearing a gas mask attached to a bong.
“It was very outrageous to see what I would call irresponsible journalism on behalf of CNN,” said Corinne Gasper, whose daughter died at the hands of an impaired driver who had used medical marijuana.
Gasper said her daughter was 22, had just graduated from college, and was on her way to work when she got into the fatal accident.
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“She was T-boned at an intersection by a man who was traveling 82 miles per hour through a red light,” she said. “My daughter’s car was pushed across the road through a bunch of shrubbery and then through the doors of a lube-stop building, and the building collapsed on top of her car.”
Gasper said the other driver, who was unhurt, served 17 months of a two-year sentence.
“A lot of people are filled with misnomers that have been put out by … the marijuana industry,” she said. “And I definitely think that we need more education. Because this isn’t the weed from the ’70s.”
PoliZette senior writer Brendan Kirby can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter here.
(photo credit, homepage and article images: CNN)
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