I guess this really needs to be said at every opportunity that arises in which to say it: FOX news in nothing less than the Official Catapult of Republican Propaganda.
It's all they do, it's all they are for. It is exactly why they were created....by a Republican.
One thing republicans CANNOT DO is accept the ongoing relegalization of marijuana.
This has always been a giant dividing line in America's Culture Wars, one of the most-defining aspects of it, in fact.
FOX merely regurgitates what republicans think and believe and it is clear they are still stuck in Reagan's crosseyed ignorant war against the Weed.
So as WE THE PEOPLE force marijuana to be legal once again, the GOP is freaking out and FOX News gives them media access to show Americans just exactly how backwards, ignorant, and hateful they are.
The following tidbit rolls it all up into one venal, stupid, asshole-backwards snippet.
Fox News doctor: ‘Crack babies’ come from women ‘smoking this whole marijuana business’
First, an aside: ANYBODY introduced as a "FOX News Doctor" cannot possibly be taken seriously. They just can't:I know this, you probably know this, but a lot of Americans still don't know that FOX is just rabidly anti-reality.
On with the show: First we have this "Dr Samadi" character introducing us to how backwards he is: provided details of one of the many studies that show tobacco is more harmful than cannabis
“I think it’s a very dangerous study,” Samadi argued. “People need to be very careful about not getting the wrong message from this study. They’re using a lethal dose as a comparison. For example, they’re putting pot against or weed against cocaine or alcohol. We know you need less amount of alcohol to die. So, they’re using death to see what’s dangerous and what’s not.”
“They’re extrapolating a lot of these animal studies and surveys that doesn’t make a lot of sense and coming with this whole thing that pot is safer,” the doctor insisted. “Absolutely not. It’s a huge fraud.”
He went on to remind people that THC stands for " 3-headed Children". (OK, no he didn't: he's not capable of being that creative.)
It is REQUIRED that republicans LIE ENDLESSLY about marijuana: to the point that I suggest that anti-marijuana propaganda is nothing but rightwing/Republican talking points.
“We’re seeing in Colorado that we had 13 kids that came to the emergency [room] and ended up in the ICU as a result of overdose from marijuana,” Samadi said. “Now we have crack babies coming in because pregnant women are smoking this whole marijuana business.”
The Fox News Medical A-Team doctor concluded by calling medical marijuana “the biggest scam I’ve ever seen.”
Propagandists always have copious media access, since, in America, there is no such thing as a liberal media (no matter how often some rightwing nutbag begs to differ: if there was even a remotely liberal media in America, we never would have invaded Iraq, war protests would be covered like the actions of heroes and marijuana would have been relegalized in the early 1970s.
And this lets propagandists load up sentences with 2 and 3 propaganda talking points and dog whistles. The 2 sentences above will be dissected now.
"13 kids in the ER" - starting back in the 1990s' SAMSHA, a main US government drug propaganda mill, started publishing data they called "ER Mentions": you stepped on a piece of broken glass somebody else broke and you have to go to the ER. In the ER you will be subject - hopefully - to a reasonably comprehensive assessment so that doctors can hone in on what needs to be done.
If you even mention weed or drug use, no matter when, that is 'captured' as an 'emergency room mention" and that data is then taken totally out of context and paraded around as if the sky was actually falling.
So 13 kids mentioned 'wed' in the ER. Kids NEVER got into weed before it was relegalized. Not ever. (rolleyes) Nor do kids ever consume alcohol illegally...and overdose on it.
It could be those kids actually ate something they weren't supposed to eat, like edible marijuana.I didn't see anything in this breathless hyperbole that the teens died. They didn't, but six persons, mostly adult men, die from alcohol poisoning each day in the United States. Alcohol poisoning death rates vary substantially by state.. Please freak out about people consuming marijuana, but don't even notice 6 deaths per day from legal alcohol, OKAY??
Now we get to the "Crack Babies" statement. Is this doctor that stupid?
Yes, he is, but even more than stupid, this is a racist dog-whistle.
An added bonus is republicans LOVE totally wrong misinformation so associating 'crack' with 'marijuana' would be a totally republican thing to do, and it's a 2-fer since it brings up the specter of 'crack'.
So this is FOX being what FOX was totally created for: catapulting republican propaganda horseshit over the airwaves, lying to people about the real world and trying to get innocent people hurt.
They are lying sacks of shit and they can just go fuck themselves with a jackhammer.