Stoners Against Legalization Shamefully Misquote Hempfest Founder
Once again, as they did during the Prop 19 in campaign in 2010, the Stoners Against Legalization in California are agitating for a rejection of Prop 64, the marijuana legalization initiative. And once again, they are recklessly and willfully distorting, obfuscating, twisting, and outright lying about how legalization will work in California.
But the latest act by these enablers of marijuana prohibition sets a new low.
The culprit in this case goes by the pseudonym (I assume) of Dragonfly de la Luz. The last we heard from her was during the Prop 19 campaign where she was up to the same despicable yellow journalism she’s now peddling at a Blogspot site called ‘PROGRESSIVES AGAINST THE PROP. 64 ADULT USE MARIJUANA ACT” (which I won’t link to).
At the beginning of her most recent post entitled “WHY CALIFORNIA PROGRESSIVES ARE VOTING NO ON PROP. 64”, she opens with the following quote:
“I thought for decades that legalization meant that we would all keep doing what we were doing without fear of arrest or prosecution. I failed to grasp that the powers that be would see it as just another angle [from] which to gain control and hand opportunity to the wealthiest, most ruthless, [and] most connected…”
– Vivian McPeak, Executive Director, Seattle Hempfest
What Dragonfly failed to grasp is that Vivian McPeak hasn’t established a public position on Prop 64. The quote she is using came from Vivian’s Facebook posts in reference to Washington’s I-502. When another Stoner Against Legalization, Steve Kubby, shared Dragonfly’s post far and wide on Facebook, Vivian made it quite clear in a reply that he wasn’t too happy about it.
This article is taking select posts I have made on Facebook that had NO REFERENCE TO AUMA AT ALL and is ascribing my comments out of context to the AUMA Proposition. I never gave permission for my words to be used in this fashion, in this piece, or by these authors. I was NOT referring to AUMA (Prop 64) when made the statements included in this article or whatever it is. Nobody has EVER contacted me and asked me what my position or opinions are about Prop 64. I deeply resent being used as a stooge to advance someone’s positions other than my own. I have never publicly stated that I was for or against Prop 64.
When I was first alerted to Dragonfly’s transgression, the quote of Vivian’s read exactly as I have it transcribed, but without the hyperlink. Since then, the quote has been altered to include the hyperlink and the modifier “on the aftermath of Washington’s recreational initiative” following Vivian’s title.
Weirdly, the hyperlink she has supplied doesn’t go to the source of Vivian’s quote, as you’d expect, but to a Seattle P-I op-ed that Vivian wrote in May entitled “Washington: The worst legal cannabis model. Don’t copy us.”
In that piece, Vivian laments Washington state’s lack of personal home cannabis growing rights and notes how all the other legal states have that right. He observes that Washington makes it a felony for adults to share cannabis and notes how all the other legal states allow adult sharing. He criticizes the Washington legislature for the reductions in patient supply and access that arose from merging the medical and recreational systems. He indicts Washington’s 5 nanogram per se marijuana DUID limit as an “unscientific” standard that can merit a DUID conviction with “no sign at all of impairment.”
In his opening, Vivian opines, “I am hoping that none of those states will look to my home state as a model, because I think we have done the worst job of the 4 states that have decriminalized cannabis so far.” In his closing, Vivian advises, “If you live in a state that has not legalized you need to start your own citizen’s initiative if you can.”
California did and got Prop 64 on the ballot.
Under Prop 64, unlike Washington’s I-502, Californians will be able to grow cannabis plants at home.
Under Prop 64, unlike Washington’s I-502, Californians will be able to share cannabis between adults.
Under Prop 64, unlike Washington’s I-502, California already established statewide medical marijuana regulations and Prop 64 in three different sections states that the Compassionate Use Act (medical marijuana) is not affected by this initiative.
Under Prop 64, unlike Washington’s I-502, Californians will not be subject to an unscientific per se DUID standard.
It looks like California’s Prop 64 took Vivian McPeak’s advice and didn’t model itself after the worst of Washington’s I-502. For Dragonfly to link to that column in response to getting called out on using Vivian’s quote out of context to disparage Prop 64 is amusingly ironic.
