The FOX News host has an obsession with marijuana, and his reefer madness is becoming unhealthy for everyone involved.
Apparently, this is Tucker Carlson’s schtick now. Incite decades-old and debunked reefer madness to enrage conservative listeners about the secret, evil plan to legalize marijuana and brainwash Americans. It seems Tucker Carlson is high on Reefer Madness.
He told viewers last November Democrats supported cannabis reform so they could dumb down young voters and numb them out. The House, Carlson said the month prior, passed the SAFE Banking Act so it would “be easier to sell drugs to Americans.” (Marijuana companies aren’t afforded same financial advantages as small business across the country, meaning if they fail, bankruptcy isn’t an option.) He also blamed the tragic mass shootings on cannabis, using widely discredited science to link chronic marijuana use to acts of violence.
You would think viewers would catch on to the act by now. But Tucker Carlson saw Donald Trump doubling down on his anti-marijuana rhetoric, and said, watch what I can do. In a recent segment, Carlson dismissed the War on Drugs as not that serious and characterized Bernie Sanders’ intention to legalize cannabis through executive order as a conspiracy against the underemployed middle class.
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“Oh, the war on drugs! Bernie Sanders talks about that in every speech he gives,” Carlson said, as captured by Mediate. “A declining country with a sad underemployed middle class obviously needs to smoke a ton more weed. That’s Bernie’s solution…Fire up a bowl. Numb out. Maybe you won’t notice.”
But Carlson revealed his more sinister opinions when discussing social equality in the cannabis industry. Under Sanders’ plan, communities of color disproportionately affected by the War on Drugs will be given funding and opportunity to launch marijuana businesses. As Sanders said at a recent debate, this will allow small-time as well as minority-owned “businesses to sell legal marijuana rather than let a few corporations…control the legalized marijuana market.”
Carlson took this as an opportunity to incite moral panic in white, conservative audiences.
“Where is this weed going to come from? Bernie has a plan for that, too. Black people are going to sell it to you,” he said.
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“So first, they fill black neighborhoods with abortion clinics. Now the frontrunner is encouraging more black kids to sell drugs, but somehow this is the party that loves black America.”
Who is this racist prohibitionist rhetoric playing to? The majority of Americans now support marijuana legalization, according to the latest polling data. Every generation except those ages 73 and older, otherwise known as The Silent Generation, believe in ending cannabis prohibition. If this schtick is working on anyone, perhaps there’s your demographic.
