Starting At Anti-Drug Quarterback, Kevin Sabet

• From wiki: In February of 2013, Salon Magazine referred to Kevin as “the quarterback of the new anti-drug movement.”

The Playing Field

Welcome to Oregon, player. Hope you enjoy this stop on your platform building tour.

Mr. Sabet, a Cal Berkeley grad with a PhD from Oxford understands his audience. When the subject is weed, he gets it. Isn’t Berkeley famous for serious students and serious stoners?

A quick quizz: Where did a former U.S. President claim to not inhale weed at Oxford?

While no one suggests the latest weed whacker tucked a towel under his dorm door, or had a permanent booth at the Turf Tavern, he appears to have traveled a well worn stone trail.

Oregon asked him to come spread his words of weed wisdom. Why? Could it be because the former DEA top man in Oregon is now in the weed biz himself, where consulting and explaining the law sends the wrong message, along with another long-time DEA man?

Quick, call Kevin Sabet and go long. Calling Kevin a quarterback shows how misinformed smart people are about football analogies. He’s not a quarterback, he’s a defensive back. They’re just not as glamorous, not as drawn to the spotlight as the QB.

And Kevin Sabet is glamorous. You get that when your wedding is in Real Weddings magazine. He’s a real guy.

• From the Oregonian:

“Folks think they are voting for allowing otherwise responsible adults to grow a little bit of pot in their backyard and smoke a little weed without having the cops on their back,” said Sabet. “I don’t think we fully realize as a country what we are getting into.”

Young Kevin is thirty four. And he speaks for the entire country, calling America stupid. That’s a winning idea, but who does it resonate with?

Legalized weed won’t mean half the nation jumps on the pot farm wagon, refuses proper haircuts, and turns up their bootleg Dead tapes. Is that the future he fears, or something else?

“This is not about your nice neighbor who likes to smoke a joint after work once a week,” he said. “It’s really about creating the next Big Tobacco, an industry that thrives off of addiction.”

Stare and compare: Big Tobacco vs Big Mary. We know BT infused their product with addictive enhancements, pushed their product to the extreme, and worked hard to keep the health effects hidden.

If Big Mary happens they’ll be held to a higher standard. Freedom to grow weed opens the door to hemp cultivation. Hemp for paper, rope, clothing. Hemp to replace materials creating problems in the modern, overcrowded, world. It’s about more than Bob the bong man, Kevin. It’s about being a better steward of America.

Marijuana is a drug, but the next time you hear about an industrial use for crack and meth will be the first. The plant based drug, unlike it’s cooked up cousins, is ready for work.

• More from the Oregonian:

Marijuana proponents vigorously dispute Sabet’s claims, calling him a fearmonger who distorts marijuana’s harms.

“The biggest problem with Sabet,” said Russ Belville, a Portland legalization advocate and host of a cannabis radio show, “is he wants to treat all adult marijuana consumers as if they are addicts in need of treatment.”

Sabet counters that Americans don’t realize how potent today’s marijuana is and how it’s increasingly marketed to teens in the form of pot-infused candies, sweets and junk food. 

With legalization such a hot button, does Kevin believe all of America is uninformed? What happens when an underaged citizen gets arrested with booze? They get questions like, “Who bought this for you? Where’d you get it?” Then the roof caves in. The same will happen with marijuana.

In the meantime, the Joe McCarthy-like claims from Mr. Sabet and followers in his wake continue to alarm Americans by feeding them their worst fears. How did Senator McCarthy turn out. Tail-Gunner Joe railed against commies and homosexuals in government, took a slap down, then drank himself to death by age 48.

Better to join the marijuana law reform movement than an early death.

• Finally, more from wiki: Currently, he Directs the Drug Policy Institute at the University of Florida and is President of a drug policy consulting company, Policy Solutions Lab, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is also a regular contributor to TV and print media and is a blogger for the Huffington Post.

Florida needs Kevin Sabet more than Oregon. With the ‘Oxy-Express’ barreling down on the prescription pill mills and the pin action off that, he’s got his work cut out for decades of doing good work on the anti-drug front.

Between us bloggers, Kevin, this Portland baby boomer and boomerpdx will be interested in your progress there.