Yet again, it’s time for the Statist of the Week!
Now remember, a statist is someone who believes that government is the answer to all our problems. That government is … well, like your mom and dad, with the authority to direct your behavior. But it’s for your own good, dontcha know?
This week’s statist is none other than Sen. C. Scott Grow. Sen. Grow hates marijuana. He hates it so much that he wants to amend the state’s constitution to make it virtually impossible for Idaho’s war on drugs to end, even as the rest of the country wise up and say maybe an all-out cannabis prohibition is not such a smart idea after all.
Maybe it’s wrong to tell the epilepic teenager he cannot benefit from cannabis products. And to the veteran with PTSD. And to my own mom, who is nearly 80 and doesn’t smoke or drink but lives in a state with access to medical marijuana for her depression and MS.
Grow’s constitutional amendment, SJR 101, would add about 40,000 words to our state constitution when you count all the statutory references he included in his proposal, according to Sen. Steve Vick, who gathered the research. That would double the size of our existing state constitution.
It would, for the first time ever, mention a federal agency, the Food and Drug Administration, by name. The amendment puts the FDA – a staple of the American Left, a byproduct of the 1930s FDR era – in our constitution. It would give bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. power over Idaho. All this because Grow is afraid of – or believes in – the outdated and often debunked propaganda of “the devil’s lettuce.”
If it were to pass, Grow’s amendment would leave no room for future debate about drug laws. No wiggle room for future Idahoans to decide, via their elected representatives and senators, that cannabis makes sense for people with certain medical conditions or is a better alternative to opioids and other dangerous narcotics. No room to look at states that have successfully implemented cannabis laws. I’m not talking about California, Oregon, and Washington, I’m talking about places like Montana, Utah, Alaska, and North Dakota, where they’re working so well that you’ve probably forgotten – or haven’t thought about the fact that those states even have legal marijuana.
I’ve often said conservatives have every reason to dislike marijuana prohibition. It’s a product of government looking for new things to ban after alcohol prohibition ended. It’s a product of racism. This is well documented. Linking marijuana to minorities and minorities to violence was part of the campaign that led to making marijuana illegal in the 20th century.
And it's the product of cronyism, where Big Pharma and the medical establishment want to direct all medical decisions through a system of doctors and pharmacies. They’re a big part of feeding the narrative that it’s marijuana that’s causing the decline of states like California and cities like Portland and Seattle; really, at the root of all the evil that’s hurting those states is statism.
And I happen to think statism, in all its forms and strains, is scarier than any strain of weed you’ll find in a marijuana dispensary. Statists presume that people are incapable of making the right decisions for themselves, their employees, and their children. They assume that it’s up to them to protect people, and they’re willing to embed their thinking into the constitution for all time and gloss over the real implications and the real hurt they cause
In the words of C.S. Lewis, Scott Grow and those who voted for SJR 101 are imposing their own brand of tyranny with the approval of their own conscience, knowing they’re “more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth.”
And that’s why our Statist of the Week is Sen. C. Scott Grow.
Who is your pick for Statist of the Week? Let me know at [email protected].
