The DEA Is Trying To Block Medical Marijuana In Utah By Claiming Stoned Rabbits Will Ruin America

In a hearing on Medical Marijuana last Thursday by senators and law enforcement officials in Utah one DEA agent claimed that medical marijuana could (and would) lead to stoned rabbits fearless of human beings, and destructive deforestation all across Utah.

In addition to telling tales about the catastrophic deforestation effects of marijuana, special agent Matt Fairbanks is a member of the DEA’s ‘marijuana eradication’ committee and claims to have seen firsthand rabbits under the effects of marijuana and who have become fearless of human beings, and who have lost the ‘fight or flight’ defense mechanism all mammals possess.

You can listen to special agent Matt Fairbanks’ full testimony HERE (starts just after 58:00), or you can keep on reading as I’ve pulled excerpts from The Washington Post’s Chris Ingraham where he completely takes this fuckwad to task for fear-mongering and shitty science:

“I deal in facts. I deal in science,” said special agent Matt Fairbanks, who’s been working in the state for a decade. He is member of the “marijuana eradication” team in Utah. Some of his colleagues in Georgia recently achieved notoriety by raiding a retiree’s garden and seizing a number of okra plants.

Fairbanks spoke of his time eliminating back-country marijuana grows in the Utah mountains, specifically the environmental costs associated with large-scale weed cultivation on public land: “Personally, I have seen entire mountainsides subjected to pesticides, harmful chemicals, deforestation and erosion,” he said. “The ramifications to the flora, the animal life, the contaminated water, are still unknown.”

Fairbanks said that at some illegal marijuana grow sites he saw “rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana. …” He continued: “One of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone.”

It’s true that illegal pot farming can have harmful environmental consequences. Of course, nothing about these consequences is unique to marijuana. If corn were outlawed and cartels started growing it in national forests, the per-plant environmental toll would be about the same.

Now, regarding rabbits. Some wild animals apparently do develop a taste for bud (and, yes, best to keep it away from your pets). But I don’t know that the occasional high rabbit constitutes grounds for keeping marijuana prohibition in place, any more than drunk squirrels are an argument for outlawing alcohol. And let’s not even get started on the nationwide epidemic of catnip abuse.

If you’re not already an avid reader of Chris Ingraham on The Wonk Blog, add it to your bookmarks NOW. He’s putting out some of the best critiques you’ll read on people trying to propagate marijuana prohibition, and drug policy in general.

What’s absolutely ridiculous that a senate committee would take the word of a man whose very livelihood depends on him convincing the committee that marijuana is dangerous and will ruin society. With the legalization of marijuana there’s no need for the ‘marijuana eradication’ team, and this DEA special agent’s bottom dollar gets affected. Now I’m not saying he committed perjury, but I do think he’s spewing bullshit from his mouth that has no scientific base or means by which it can be corroborated. He’s simply out to maintain a state of fear, and distract everyone from the fact that medical marijuana would probably be the best thing to ever happen to our healthcare system.

It’s bullshit task forces like this (and big pharma lobbyists) that are preventing sick people from getting the care they need, and it’s wonderful to see that their grip on misinformation is loosening every day.

As for rabbits getting stoned by merely eating marijuana plants (when the THC’s psychoactive properties aren’t truly activated) this is how I imagine it all played out:

Utah DEA Special Agent Matt Fairbanks

The Stone Rabbit Matt Fairbanks Thinks He Saw

What Really Happened: The Rabbit Was Trying To Eat Raspberries And Scared The Shit Out Of Everyone

[The Washington Post]