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Feds Plan to Crack Down on Ads for Marijuana

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Photo by Lee J Haywood via Flickr

Gird your loins, LA Weekly: the feds are getting ready to crack down on newspaper ads for marijuana.

Since the 1996 passage of Prop 215, the Compassionate Use Act, ads for pot dispensaries have popped up on TV and in alt papers. Now, the Huffington Post reports that they're becoming more common in mainstream publications, including the Sacramento Bee.

And while medical marijuana is legal in California, it's still against federal law.

To that end, U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy will soon be focusing her attention on media companies that run ads for shops that sell weed.

"I'm not just seeing print advertising," Duffy told California Watch and KQED. "I'm actually hearing radio and seeing TV advertising. It's gone mainstream. Not only is it inappropriate - one has to wonder what kind of message we're sending to our children - it's against the law."

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  • malcolmkyle

    These 'fast & furious' gun-running Feds are not only guilty of perjury and murder but also of bankrolling ruthless criminals, international terrorists, right/left-wing paramilitaries and various death squads with their counter-productive, sado-moralist policy of Prohibition.

    Colombia, Peru, Mexico or Afghanistan with their coca leaves, marijuana buds or poppy sap are not igniting temptation in the minds of our weak, innocent citizens. These countries are duly responding to the enormous demand that comes from within our own borders. Invading or destroying these countries, thus creating more hate, violence, instability, injustice and corruption, will not fix our problem. We need to collectively admit that we are sick. -- Prohibition is neither a sane nor a safe approach; left unabated, its puritanical flames will surely engulf every last one of us!

    When we legally regulate something, (as opposed to when we foolishly attempt to prohibit something) we do NOT automatically condone it's use; the legal regulations concerning the sale and manufacture of alcohol and tobacco are there to protect us from the vast increase in criminality and mayhem that would otherwise surely exist if we were foolish enough to prohibit them.

    When governments prohibit drugs they effectively and knowingly hand a monopoly on their sale to dangerous criminals and terrorists. Without a legal framework in which to operate, these black-market entities can always be expected to settle their disputes violently, while terrorizing many peaceful and innocent citizens in the process. Were the users of alcohol to blame for the St Valentines massacre in the US in 1929? Of course not! It is just as naive to assume that one can compel all the users of Marijuana or Cocaine to simply quit, as it is to assume that all the users of Alcohol should have stopped drinking after the introduction of alcohol prohibition in 1919.

    Protect our Children; Legalize, Regulate & Tax!

  • Good close all down . 

  • malcolmkyle

    Susan, being you're a Prohibitionist the rest of us feel you owe us answers to the following questions:

    #1. Why do you rejoice at the fact that we have all been stripped of our 4th amendment rights and are now totally subordinate to a corporatized, despotic government with a heavily armed and corrupt, militarized police force whose often deadly intrusions into our homes and lives are condoned by an equally corrupt and spineless judiciary?

    #2. Why do you wish to continue to spend $50 billion a year to prosecute and cage your fellow citizens for choosing drugs which are not more dangerous than those of which you yourself use and approve of such as alcohol and tobacco?

    #3. Do you honestly expect the rest of us to look on passively while you waste another trillion dollars on this ruinously expensive garbage policy?

    #4. Why are your waging war on your own family, friends and neighbors?

    #5. Why are you so complacent with the fact that our once 'free & proud' nation now has the largest percentage of it's citizenry incarcerated than any other on the entire planet?

    #6. Why are you helping to fuel a budget crisis to the point of closing hospitals, schools and libraries?

    #7. Why do you rejoice at wasting precious resources on prohibition related undercover work while rapists and murderers walk free, while additionally, many cases involving murder and rape do not even get taken to trial because law enforcement priorities are subverted by your beloved failed and dangerous policy?

    #8. Why are you such a supporter of the 'prison industrial complex' to the extent of endangering our own children?

    #9. Will you graciously applaud, when due to your own incipient and authoritarian approach, even your own child is caged and raped?

    * It is estimated that there are over 300,000 instances of prison rape a year.
    * 196,000 are estimated to happen to men in prison.
    * 123,000 are estimated to happen to men in county jail.
    * 40,000 are estimated to be committed against boys in either adult prisons or while in juvenile facilities or lock ups.
    * 5000 women are estimated to be raped in prison. 

    #10. And will you also applaud when your own child, due to an unnecessary and counter productive felony conviction, can no longer find employment?

  • Frog1387

    lets make children illegal. That will fix everythng

  • Improv Alliance Organization

    What mixed messages does it send to our kids when it is legal to have medicinal marijuana but illegal to promote it?  Oh I know Laura:  "It's inappropriate above ground, but completely appropriate in a shadowy kind of way"

    Laura.  You were born the wrong era or have you mistaken Boardwalk Empire for your real life?

  • Hate it too when they use the "what if children see this" argument for anything.

    Can someone show the Feds the "Prohibition" doc please. How it actually created more trouble and crime than when legal. Christ.

  • ValleyTrash

    I hate it when politicians hide behind children.  There's a reason why children have parents.  This is a world for adults!

  • What kind of message do all those pharmaceutical ads send to our children? 

    "Take this pill and it will solve all your problems, (mean while let me read off all the side effects in such rapid succession that you don't have time enough to even process the information)."

  • How can it be appropriate to advertise alcohol on the radio but not marijuana, which actually has medicinal benefits?

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