Just say yes?
One of America’s most well-known anti-drug education groups publicly shared an opinion piece that favored marijuana legalization this week. But chalk it up to a failure to read before posting.
Someone in charge of the website for Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.), republished an op-ed that originally appeared Monday in the Columbus Dispatch before quietly deleting the post after readers pointed out it called for pot to be legalized in Ohio.
Since 1983, D.A.R.E. has spent millions of dollars educating kids on the dangers of illegal drug use.
The op-ed, written by a self-described “former deputy sheriff,” clearly extols on the virtues of legalizing pot. “People like me, and other advocates of marijuana legalization, are not totally blind to the harms that drugs pose to children. We just happen to know that legalizing and regulating marijuana will actually make everyone safer,” Carlis McDerment wrote.
“Please don’t let Ohio be known as one of the last bastions of marijuana hysteria,” McDerment concluded.
After deleting the op-ed from its website, a D.A.R.E. official confirmed the posting was accidental in an email to a Washington Post reporter. “We do not support legalization nor do we advocate for legalization of marijuana,” spokesperson John Lindsay said.
The piece has since gone up in smoke; it was deleted from the organization’s website sometime between Monday evening and Tuesday afternoon. New York magazine has a screenshot of the op-ed as it appeared on the D.A.R.E. website this week.
Clint Davis is a writer for the E.W. Scripps National Desk. Follow him on Twitter @MrClintDavis.
