{"id":7774,"date":"2017-10-06T23:03:43","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T23:03:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com?p=2813781&amp;preview_id=2813781"},"modified":"2017-10-06T23:03:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-06T23:03:43","slug":"legalization-opponent-kevin-sabet-takes-on-colorado-at-anti-marijuana-event","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/legalization-opponent-kevin-sabet-takes-on-colorado-at-anti-marijuana-event\/","title":{"rendered":"Legalization opponent Kevin Sabet takes on Colorado at anti-marijuana event"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"wp_fb_like_button\" style=\"margin:5px 0 5px 5px;float:right;height:100px;\"><script src=\"http:\/\/connect.facebook.net\/en_US\/all.js#xfbml=1\"><\/script><fb:like href=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/legalization-opponent-kevin-sabet-takes-on-colorado-at-anti-marijuana-event\/\" send=\"true\" layout=\"standard\" width=\"450\" show_faces=\"false\" font=\"arial\" action=\"like\" colorscheme=\"light\"><\/fb:like><\/div><div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"row\">\n<div class=\"large-10 large-centered small-12 columns\">\n<div class=\"entry-meta-date\">Published: Oct 6, 2017, 3:29 pm \u2022 Updated: Oct 6, 2017, 3:29 pm<span class=\"single-comments-link\" \/><\/div>\n<p class=\"byline\">By <span class=\"author\"><a class=\"url fn n\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/author\/alexp\/\" rel=\"author\">Alex Pasquariello<\/a><\/span><em>, The Cannabist Staff<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Marijuana has become a religion led by the false prophet money, the president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) told a symposium at Colorado Christian University.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2017\/08\/30\/smart-approaches-marijuana-sessions-laws\/87003\/\">Kevin Sabet, the leader of SAM<\/a>, a nonprofit group opposed to marijuana legalization, was the keynote speaker Friday at the school\u2019s inaugural symposium, \u201cMarijuana\u2019s True Impact on Colorado.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Colorado is \u201cground zero\u201d for a public health and public safety disaster that is not about legalization but instead about a small number of people getting very rich, Sabet said in his nearly hour-long speech that built on SAM\u2019s thesis that the legal marijuana industry is a threat akin to that of \u201cBig Tobacco\u201d and also connected the drug to the ongoing opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n<p>Tobacco wasn\u2019t that deadly before the modern cigarette, he claimed. It became deadly as a result of the marketing, promotion, and new products developed by businesses that wanted to get rich.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt took our country 90 years to wake up from our nightmare of tobacco,\u201d he warned, pointing out that the \u201clegal drugs\u201d of tobacco and alcohol are still responsible for 11 times more deaths than opioids in America annually.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWith the apparatus of commercialization behind you, it\u2019s a deadly combination,\u201d he said, linking the tobacco, alcohol and marijuana industries. \u201cI think we can learn from the past and not repeat a lot of those mistakes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The daylong event brought together anti-legalization groups, law enforcement, educators, medical professionals and public policy experts to \u201copen everyone\u2019s eyes to the downfalls for the drug,\u201d CCU\u2019s vice president of public policy Jeff Hunt said in a statement. Sabet told the mostly gray-haired crowd that marijuana legalization really wasn\u2019t about them. \u201cWhat puts profits in their pockets is this table right over here,\u201d he said, pointing to a group of young people.<\/p>\n<p>What they\u2019re really after is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2017\/05\/01\/research-teens-marijuana-thc-brain-development\/78470\/\">developing brain<\/a>, he said, because that is where you hook a life-long customer.<\/p>\n<p>Sabet also connected marijuana use with the state\u2019s current opioid epidemic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSubstance abuse problems are poly-substance abuse problems. They\u2019re not done in a vacuum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Sabet asserted that the vast majority of those dying of opioid overdoses have tried and used a lot of marijuana and alcohol in their life, citing a September 2017 <a href=\"http:\/\/ajp.psychiatryonline.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1176\/appi.ajp.2017.17040413\">study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry<\/a> that found cannabis use appears to increase the risk of developing non-medical prescription opioid use.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf I\u2019m looking at the people who are dying today, I can\u2019t divorce marijuana, alcohol \u2026 all the other substances that are going on with that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Coloradans also need to wake up if they think marijuana legalization is about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/2016\/10\/12\/decriminalization-marijuana-arrests-25-seconds-report\/65015\/\">social justice<\/a>, Sabet said, rejecting what he called a \u201cfalse dichotomy\u201d between locking up drug users and people of color in a War on Drugs or full marijuana legalization. He said that arrest rates for juveniles of color had gone up post-legalization and also pointed out the high concentration of \u201cpot shops\u201d in Denver\u2019s Hispanic and African-American communities.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOf course they\u2019re going after the weakest in society,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what you do when you\u2019re a predatory industry.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s why there are eight times the number of liquor stores in poor communities of color as in upper-class communities, he said. That\u2019s why the makers of OxyContin focused on poor rural whites in Kentucky and West Virginia in the late 2000s.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is about making guys that look like me and live where I live \u2014 I live in Manhattan \u2014 rich,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is about Wall Street and Silicon Valley.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Sabet concluded his keynote by saying that there is a pushback against legal marijuana brewing in Colorado and on the national level, and he called for those at the gathering to continue their efforts to stem the effects of legalization.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m confident we have the truth and we have the science,\u201d he said. \u201cAt the end of the day, industry will not prevail, I\u2019m certain.\u201d<\/p>\n<h4>Watch SAM president Kevin Sabet\u2019s full keynote speech:<\/h4>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\">[embedded content]<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"entry-meta-author\">\n<div class=\"authorimage\"><a class=\"url fn n\" href=\"http:\/\/www.thecannabist.co\/author\/alexp\/\" rel=\"author\"><img src=\"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/legalization-opponent-kevin-sabet-takes-on-colorado-at-anti-marijuana-event.jpg\" class=\"authormug\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p class=\"author-desc\">Alex joined The Cannabist as Editor in April 2017. He started his journalism career in Colorado as a reporter at community newspapers and national ski magazines before heading to New York to work as an editor at Cond\u00e9 Nast Traveler and digital&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><!-- .row --> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><\/div>\n<p>Marijuana has become a religion led by the false prophet money, Smart Approaches to Marijuana (SAM) president Kevin Sabet told a symposium at Colorado Christian University. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7343,6811,6813,77,5667,9,5019,6983,1,3,18,1852,61,1736],"tags":[7344,6816,6818,2655,5673,5022,6984,2622,4420],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannitrol.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}