Prohibitionist prevaricator previews propaganda her Republican cronies have planned for repeal campaign
On Sunday, Boston television station WCVB’s CityLine program aired a robust multi-part package on cannabis in Massachusetts. We may have framed some elements a little differently, but it was generally thorough in addressing everything from social consumption to pending legislation.
While it’s fully fair and relevant that CityLine featured an interview with the group trying to end recreational marijuana in Mass, again, we would have approached it from another angle. For example, the segment would have been more entertaining if Coalition for a Healthy Massachusetts Chair Wendy Wakeman was put in a dunk tank.
Every time she claimed to know what voters wanted in 2016 even though she represents people who opposed that ballot initiative so who the fuck cares what they want anyway, the interviewer would get to smash the red button.
When she discounted the claims and arguments of people who work and are invested in cannabis businesses even though many of them are quite learned having spent literal decades fact-checking prohibitionist propaganda, it’s time for another plunge.
When she said that “some of the gummies seem to be geared toward children,” they could have reminded her that kids aren’t allowed in dispensaries, asked the Republican strategist and Trump supporter if this line of thinking that everything dangerous should be banned applies to firearms, and dunked her again.
And when she belched that industry corruption is “resulting in taxpayers being on the hook to pay some pretty steep legal bills” without recognizing the hundreds of millions of dollars that come back to the state every year through dispensaries, the interviewer could have sent her ass to Water Whizz.
It’s hard to think of any other way to deal with liars of this magnitude. Wakeman is the kind of person who has gotten every single thing she has ever wanted in life, and isn’t above making shit up to get it. Her bullshit about how her campaign collected signatures is case in point. Wakeman wants it both ways: her language safely indicates that she is well aware of how the clipboard goons they hired deceived voters; still, even as the campaign points fingers at people who signed their petition without reading the fine print, she stands by their work.
Wakeman says they were “trained.” I bet they were. The gatherers who I spoke with understood that the prohibitionist measure was a difficult sell, and fed people any number of lines just to get them to sign.
There’s a last-ditch effort underway to blow this ballot measure up because of that unscrupulous behavior. When it fails, which is likely, we can look forward to another year of dunking vigilant opponents of the truth like Wakeman.
