TRUCE is given a bit of space in the article, but we’ll add that it’s the UMA whose recent press release grossly “misrepresented and misappropriated,” the position of reform advocates – not to mention casting aspersions and impugning our motives.
Since TRUCE always stands ready for open dialog with all stakeholders in the state’s medical system, it’s doubly disheartening to find such shocking disregard not only for truth, but for simple social comity and fair dealing from a powerful – and supposedly prestigious group.
But #UMA seems willing to sacrifice their image to go nuclear on the issue of medicinal cannabis.
Consider: They misidentified the initiative in their press release’s title, not just in one, but two key ways. It’s the “Utah Medical Cannabis Initiative,” not the “Utah Marijuana Initiative.”
The initiative is entirely medical in nature, and saying otherwise is meant to alarm the public by evoking the idea it is “recreational.”
Further, deliberately changing “cannabis” to “marijuana” is not minor. UMA uses it selectively throughout their release to reinforce the negative cast of all their claims.
The only logical purpose is to delegitimize the initiative before citing a single fact, which is beneath a group purporting to be the state’s leading physicians’ organization.
TRUCE never uses “marijuana” to refer to medicinal cannabis – for reasons worth clarifying.
This same name change was a key tactic used in justifying the prohibition of medicinal cannabis in 1937. Prior to this, the plant was universally known – to the public and in the US Pharmacopoeia to the many physicians who prescribed it – simply as cannabis.
The coalition of special interests behind the prohibition campaign deliberately began referring to cannabis by the little known slang term “marijuana” which (not accidentally) sounded vaguely Spanish – in order to associate personal use with Mexico and Mexican immigrants.
The campaign was full of incendiary sloganeering which strongly implied cannabis use by Mexican and African Americans (called something less complementary at that time even by government officials) was infecting the country’s culture with hard narcotics for nefarious purposes.
The 1937 law used an even more Spanish-sounding spelling: “marihuana,” so the UMA is borrowing from an old and discredited playbook from the very beginning….
….and that’s just dealing with the first thing they said…. ….the document gets much worse.
We hope UMA is hugely overplaying a weak hand here and if Utahns keep displaying the good sense on MC, there’s reason to hope this unseemly approach will fail to sway public opinion.
#MMJ #UTpol #Initiative #AttacksLiesAndPressReleases #TRUCE
See full article – Utah Medical Association weighs in on medical marijuana ballot initiative
