By Scotty Reid
Nancy Grace used to be a Georgia prosecutor before she became a television personality, legal commentator and exploiter of the Trayvon Martin tragedy for ratings. Given her recent comments on the effect cannabis use has on those who choose to use, it is important to note she spent some years locking up non-violent drug users and dealers.
Nancy Grace has been the subject of a lot articles, memes and a SNL skit poking fun at her outlandish and outright lies about cannabis use being “highly” addictive and that it leads people to shoot each other, stab each other, strangle each other and wipe out entire families.
Firstly, scientific studies have shown that cannabis is less addictive than the caffeine found in coffee, sodas and the popular energy drinks. Secondly, when I have interviewed former law enforcement officers like Neill Franklin of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, they stated that when ever there is violent crime, alcohol is most likely to be involved and that people who were under the influence of cannabis seldom became violent. Every one of them said that the violence associated with drugs is because of prohibition. Therefore it is the government drug prohibition policies that are leading to violence in poor communities where there is a lack of employment opportunities and other resources, which leads some of those individual to get involved in the street market drug trade.
Why would Nancy Grace flat out lie about the effects of cannabis use on an individual? Well as I pointed out, she is a former prosecutor and while acting as a prosecutor she was admonished several times for being “fast and loose” with ethical standards of the profession.
“In a 1994 heroin-trafficking case, Bell v. State, the Supreme Court of Georgia declared a mistrial, saying that Grace had “exceeded the wide latitude of closing argument” by drawing comparisons to unrelated murder and rape cases.”
In another case involving murder/arson, the Georgia Supreme Court accused Nancy Grace of more prosecutorial misconduct in a ruling that said, “the conduct of the prosecuting attorney in this case demonstrated her disregard of the notions of due process and fairness, and was inexcusable”.
Grace has also been accused of lying about details regarding her fiancé’s murder while she was in college in her book Objection!
Nancy Grace has a history of lying, manipulation, unfairness and disregard for professional ethical standards. However, in the court of public opinion, which is shaped by media propaganda all the time, Grace does not have to adhere to any ethical standards as it pertains to the law and HLN, as many other major “news” outlets, do not seem to hold their employees to any kind of journalistic standards but of course Nancy Grace is not a journalist.
Grace questioned whether the cannabis legalization advocate on her television program was being paid by the organization he works for. Perhaps Nancy Grace should answer questions about her own finances like does she own any stock in private prison corporations. Does her husband David Linch, an investment banker, have any investments related to the prison industrial complex where billions are being made not just on the incarceration of millions of non-violent drug offenders but a whole host of related services that involve financial transactions made by the family members transferring money to their imprison loved ones so they can buy thinks like snacks and toilet paper from the prison canteen.
Now let us contrast Nancy Grace’s comments on cannabis use with that of the President of the United States. President Obama has never denied or tried to dodge any questions about his use of cannabis as a young man like Presidents Clinton and the former alcoholic George W. Bush lied.
In a recent article published by The New Yorker, President Obama said that cannabis use was no more dangerous than the use of alcohol. In fact, he went on to say that cannabis is far safer than the use of alcohol. No one has ever died from smoking, inhaling, or eating too much cannabis whereas alcohol poisoning is common, especially among college students.
“I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through a big chunk of my adult life,” Obama told reporter David Remnick. “I don’t think it is more dangerous than alcohol.” In fact, the president went on to admit pot was actually less dangerous “in terms of its impact on the individual consumer.”
I believe we can safely assume that the President did not shoot, stab and strangle any of his fellow pot smokers growing up and he did not kill an entire family while under the influence of cannabis, which I hear is pretty good in Hawaii. Oh, did I mention by all reports he was a decent student who went on to become President of the United States?
Even though a majority of people in America believe that cannabis use should be legal and that the government does not have the right to tell people what they can do with their bodies, you still have a bunch of Nancy Graces out there who will tell outright lies about cannabis use in order to keep the status quo of prohibition making up all kinds of unsubstantiated nonsense when debating the issue.
Given the President’s comments on the legalization of cannabis in the states of Colorado and Washington, we can only hope that this marks a turning point where fairly soon, people will no longer be enslaved on prison plantations for using a plant like cannabis just so as to fill the pockets of private prison investors and keeping prison guards and cops employed. Shame on Nancy Grace for outright lying to the public.
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