Prompted by “Radical Rant: Cigarette Smoking At All-Time Lows (But Media Hypes Marijuana’s Rise)”: http://www.hightimes.com/read/radical-rant-cigarette-smoking-all-time-lows-media-hypes-marijuana%E2%80%99s-rise
The mainstream media is largely guilty for the continuance of the war on some drugs.
They are a collection of entertainment organizations supposedly serving the demand known as the “people’s right to know”.
Consuming information is like consuming food. Quality counts.
During professional competition between media outlets, there’s a focus upon securing attention by way of “dessert” news (tragedies that have no real societal impact, but a solid ‘oooooh’ factor).
The absence of “vegetable” news (healthy information for a healthier public response to address societal issues) is dominant severely against public safety.
Despite the mainstream media being upset by any accusation of media bias, they demonstrate serious media bias (and have for several decades) against their journalism code of ethics basically whenever it comes to Certain Drug Prohibition, but who’s going to report that serious alarm on behalf of a stronger public?
This is a main reason why I started our Respect Cannabis campaign (and even All Sines in general). Instead of crushing society with “dessert” information to increase the “fool factor”, I prefer to basically apply the “Whole Foods” concept to entertainment (healthy information that “tastes” good too).
The big story is this: Daily cigarette smoking by young people is at its lowest recorded levels in history.
The reason why more college kids are smoking pot than cigarettes isn’t so much because pot smoking has increased but because cigarette smoking has plummeted. Since 2000, daily pot smoking by undergrads increased from 4.6 to 5.9 percent, a relative increase of 28.3 percent. But since 2000, daily cigarette smoking decreased from 17.6 to 5.2 percent, a relative decrease of 70.8 percent.
You’d think that would be a headline somewhere, especially considering the dependence rate for tobacco smoking, according to National Institute on Drug Abuse, is about 1-out-of-3 who tries it. Somehow, we managed to go from 1-out-of-5 high school seniors smoking cigarettes daily to about 1-out-of-15, without ticketing, fining, arresting, piss-testing or jailing any adult who smokes cigarettes!
That last statement is key. Without Tobacco Prohibition, there’s been a decline in tobacco use. Why? Because the educational message that tobacco use is too risky has finally become reasonably effective (education works — liberty-infringing prohibition doesn’t).
The mainstream media demonstrates a “reason abuse pact” with areas of law enforcement unethically securing resources via the war on some drugs (e.g. at least questionable police militarization, grossly facilitated asset forfeiture/sanctioned theft, grossly abusing cannabis illegality as a law enforcement crutch to more deeply penetrate the lives of suspicious-looking individuals, etc.)
Why would the mainstream media sacrifice their journalism code of ethics for such a pact?
Because they obviously love (e.g. feel they competitively need) to report “dessert” news, which typically involves tragedy. People with the freshest newsworthy information about tragic events are — drum roll — our government. That starts with front-line law enforcement and continues up the government hierarchy. The result is de facto state-run (actually oligarchy-run) media with all of the propaganda that “We the people” often criticize upon its happening elsewhere internationally.
Positive journalists appreciating the societal need for their journalism code of ethics to keep the mainstream public properly tuned in with corruption (including excessively popular forms of it — e.g. Certain Drug Prohibition) must decouple tragedy from their reporting.
Successfully accomplishing that awesome goal is possible by selling themselves by the quality of their “vegetable” news (with a fair amount of “dessert” news without compromising aforementioned ethics) combined with key marketing terms like “new”, “fresh”, “innovative”, “smart”, “healthy”, etc. — because many of us understand the need for healthy eating for survival optimization, so can easily appreciate that “vegetable” advantage against the “dinosaurs” that have sacrificed their righteous place to hopefully finally experience a rapid drop into thankful extinction for public safety.
Moreover, positive members of our judicial community appreciating the societal need for uncorrupted law must decouple drug prohibition addiction — the form of addiction that factually has ruined millions of non-violent lives — from legitimate law and order. Based upon the whole truth and nothing but, the Black Lives Matter movement is largely connected to racially based victimization for a drug prohibition fix. That victimization is outrageous by any reasonable conclusion (regardless of racial or any other identity), and good members of law enforcement proclaiming “All lives matter.” in response to horrible police victimization must understand their prohibition addiction makes them ironically a serious public enemy (dangerous for all lives).
If the mainstream media cannot abandon their need for reason abuse (directly the antithesis of education), then society cannot escape the need to disguise widespread, too often deep, and obscenely selfishly childish corruption (an excessively foolish public led by excessively foolish “leadership”) as civility and progress — i.e. society cannot abandon the need for reason abuse.
If you think reality isn’t paying literally perfect attention to that logical conclusion (and ready to apply balancing consequences that humanity will most certainly find at least discomforting), then you’re not paying attention.
Reality obviously needs corruption, but reality also needs correction (all for stability from balance).
Which one of those general areas meets your intention combined with a best effort towards competence?
Before you answer that question, frankly one being’s correction (e.g. Certain Drug Prohibition) is another being’s corruption (e.g. Certain Drug Prohibition).
Respect Cannabis informational roots: http://stresshealth.biz/respect-cannabis
I am an honest freak (or reasonably responsibly balanced "misfit", if you prefer) of an artist working and resting to best carefully contribute towards helping society. Too many people abuse reasoning (e.g. 'partial truth = whole truth' scam), while I exercise reason to explore and express whole truth without any conflict-of-interest -- all within a sometimes offbeat style of psychedelic artistry.
Spirit Wave Journal 
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