Sheila Polk – intentionally misleading, moron, corrupt, or some combination?

This is just unreal…

Safe pot? Tell that to the 62 kids who died by Sheila Polk, Yavapai County Attorney and vice chair of Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy.

Marijuana is an addictive and hazardous drug. But lately, some have taken to proclaiming that “marijuana is safer than alcohol,” a message that is not only wrong but dangerous.

According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, in a study that examines all deaths in Arizona of children under the age of 18, a disturbing number of child deaths resulted from substance use. It was linked to the deaths of 128 of Arizona’s children in 2013.

Guess which substance was the most prevalent? Not alcohol, not methamphetamine (although they were close seconds), but marijuana. In 2013, marijuana use was associated with the tragic and needless deaths of 62 children in Arizona. […]

It is unconscionable to experiment with legalization on Arizona’s youth. Those 62 children whose lives were snuffed out in 2013 would certainly agree.

The only thing missing, of course, is what the study actually says:

Note: Although substance use is a known risk factor in child fatalities, it is important to remember the term associated is used because it is not always clear if or how the substance use had a direct or contributing effect on the fatality incident.

The CFR program defines substance use as associated with a child’s death if the child, the child’s parent, caretaker and/or if the person responsible for the death, during or about the time of the incident leading to the death, used or abused substances, including illegal drugs, prescription drugs, and/or alcohol.

Also, the study notes that more than one substance may have been “associated.”

Just think how high the numbers would be if they tracked how many child deaths were associated with milk, based on this definition!

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31 Responses to Sheila Polk – intentionally misleading, moron, corrupt, or some combination?

  1. Duncan20903 says:

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    “Never let the facts get in the way of disseminating an effective piece of hysterical rhetoric”

    ~~ The Prohibitionists’ Motto

  2. Will says:

    Wow, the study’s “note” is a piece of work. It knocks anything the study claims into the Great Vague Beyond — or not.

  3. DdC says:

    Time to Sue the liars for causing harm with their lies.

  4. Doug Snead says:

    So classic.

    Polk: “child deaths resulted from substance use”

    intended image: kids take marijuana, overdose, and die

    To vilify drugs and their users, prohibitionists often associate drugs with crime, especially violent crime. The propagandist links crime, violence, illness and insanity to the targeted drug, hoping people will fear the drug and its users.
    There are few limits to this prohibition theme. Any problem real or imagined will work, if the problem can be plausibly linked to the forbidden drug in the reader’s mind. This theme plays squarely upon fear. Standard propaganda techniques drug warriors employ in this theme include transfer, and name calling. As always, the propaganda technique of card stacking is helpful in selection of events to report and emphasize.1 Associating (certain) drugs with crime or illness is a classic prohibitionist propaganda theme.
    (Drug War Propaganda, ch.2)

    the study Polk used says: “the term associated is used because it is not always clear if or how the substance use had a direct or contributing effect on the fatality incident.”

    No, that’s the plausible cover fib. The real reason is because propagandists can cast a wide net in their search for anything, anything that can be used (in propaganda) to make pot look bad. And so support the continued police-statery that pot provides our porcine enforcers and politician enablers.

    It really reminds me of the loose and false prohibitionist talk that cannabis “leads to” this or that.

    The clever propagandist won’t get caught actually saying that using one drug “causes” use of other drugs; this causality is suggested, instead. The suggestion is seen in phrases like, “is associated with”, or “leads to”, or “is correlated with”, or “is a gateway to”, “a stepping-stone to”, or “linked with.” It is as if the propagandist knows making the assertion that using one drug causes use of another would be too blatant or obvious, and would be rejected by the target audience. So instead, the causality is only suggested; the reader is left to complete the connection.
    (Drug War Propaganda, ch. 4)

  5. free radical says:

    I’ve said it before: prohibitionists hate the argument that cannabis is safer than alcohol, not because it’s not true, or irrelevant, or because it sends the wrong message to kids. Rather, they hate it because its a winning argument. It sure seemed to play a huge part of colorado’s victory.

  6. Duncan20903 says:

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    Cheer up people. Did you read all of the 250 comments? Well neither did I but I skimmed them and I wrote a synopsis so you don’t have to waste your time reading them: “Sheila Polk is a blithering idiot.”

    I can recall the day when she would have been fêted for her devotion to truth, justice and the American way.

    I think people who invent propaganda whether that’s done for a living or just as an avocation should learn a hard lesson. You really shouldn’t try to cast your opposition as idiots. I mean, what does that say about you when your opposition take you out to the woodshed to teach you a lesson? The more “stupid” that they “prove” we are, the funnier it is that we’re kicking their behinds at the ballot box and in the Legislatures.

    Gosh she gave me a warm fuzzy. Ain’t it just a crying shame? I wonder if we could commission Weird Al to write a parody about people like her. Like that Paul Simon song but changed to “Still Clueless After All These Years” or something similar?

  7. Duncan20903 says:

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    Recently spoken at the recent National Jewish Health’s Marijuana and Health Symposium and very much in contention for quote of the year: 15 year old medicinal cannabis patient Coltyn Turner said, “I’d rather be illegally alive than legally dead.”

    (please don’t mind me. I’m full blown manic this morning.)

  8. DdC says:

    Sheila Pork Milkin It… Time to sue for damages from these Gossip queens and Gossip salesmen like the crap Kevie and Calvina sell. Too gullible to realize their unrealistic idiocy only works if you can keep the truth hidden. Media bias and censorship did well until the internet. Now they scratch and claw and basically make life miserable for millions of Americans who have no problem with cannabis. Using kids when a simple search finds thousands victimized by the drug war. Literally stopping children from seizure relief is unprecedented as far as I know. Torturing kids? Its beyond screaming fire in crowded theaters. The elected leadership is inflaming groups to do violence on American citizens who disagree with the lies spewed mostly for maintaining profits or paychecks. The damage created by these no less than evil beings should be compensated and those knowingly lying to pass legislation are guilty of mass murder. Everything made of atoms and molecules proves this is true while they defend their profiteering on future hobgoblins and flat out lies. Including manipulation of data and purposely deceiving the public. There is no fence to sit on. Only the Laws of Physics and the lack of victims.

    “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.”
    ~ Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering,
    Nazi Air Force (Luftwaffe) commander, the Nuremberg Trials

    Sheila Polk – intentionally misleading, moron, corrupt, or some combination?

    “Another weapon I discovered early was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me. The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag – a thing with a soul that could mirror my own.”
    ~ Adolf Hitler

    Sheila Polk honored for developing ethical courses
    Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk will be honored next month by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for her work developing ethical leadership programs using lessons learned from the Holocaust.

    Well this does explain her position. Most use the lessons of the Holocaust as a reminder to not repeat it. She uses the lessons to accomplish her ends justify means agenda. So she believes all cannabis users should be anniolated. Stigmatizing and lies to dehumanize a group sounds more like the Nazi’s than the victims.

    “All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it.”

    “Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
    “Mein Kampf” by Adolfn Hitler

    Nazism or WoD
    What is the difference to these drug worriers?

    CONFISCATION OF PROPERTY & assets are seized from people who are in targeted groups. It may be divided between the informer and the state. LIES – ‘Facts’, which cannot be verified, pseudo scientific studies are used as propaganda against the targeted group. History is rewritten. PREJUDICE – Selling the public on the idea that all members of the targeted group are ‘bad’ people. NO PUBLIC DEBATE – “These people have no right to have their views aired.” and ” Anyone who disagrees or questions us must be one of them!” DEHUMANIZATION – Characterizing all members of a targeted group as subhuman and typically capable of monstrous deeds and/or crimes. PROTECT OUR CHILDREN – “They corrupt, seduce and or destroy our children.” CIVIL LIBERTIES SACRIFICED – “We must give up some of our freedoms, liberties, and rights in order to combat this menace to society.” LEGAL DESCRIMINATION – Laws criminalize targeted groups. Denied jobs, the right to rent, own property. Restricted to where they may live. INFORMERS – Citizens are urged to ‘turn in’ friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members. SECRET POLICE – Non-uniformed police squads set up to wage war on targeted groups utilizing deception, infiltration, espionage & entrapment. REMOVAL FROM SOCIETY – Prisons, rehabilitation camps, ‘hospitals’, executions and genocide. Zero Tolerance – Kill Them All.

    Collaterally Damaged Kids

    Drug Worrier Cults

    “You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? ”
    – Richard M. Nixon

    • DdC says:

      tack on
      American Council for Patient Liberty

      Remove List
      ~ Remove Tom Horne from the position of Arizona Attorney General
      ~ Remove Bill Montgomery from the position of Maricopa County Attorney
      ~ Remove Sheila Polk from the position of Yavapai County Attorney

      Is Sheila Polk on solid ground?

      “I have been told that the newly appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, John Leonardo, fully intends to prevent any dispensaries from operating in Arizona by seizing each and every one as it opens and commits violations of the CSA (Controlled Substances Act),” Polk wrote to the governor.

      Polk said she got that information from Coulson, who said he had talked to Leonardo. While he doesn’t know exactly what Leonardo will do, he said he knows Department of Justice policy.

      “The Department of Justice position has been not to let these dispensaries operate,” Coulson said. “Landlords will be at risk of having properties seized.” Read More »

  9. jean valjean says:

    OT
    Privileged White Guy arrested:

    “So, Sgt. Chu and the other members of Berkeley’s Drug Task Force – if you’re reading this, thank you. And I mean that sincerely. You showed me a glimpse of what it’s like – what it’s reallylike – to be a marginalized, second-class citizen in the land of the free. You have re-energized my activism against the cruelly disastrous drug war in a way no textbook ever could. You have given me a new focus to my life – to work tirelessly and ceaselessly until you, and every other cop like you, is unemployed. Until there is no longer any place for you in our society.”
    http://www.alternet.org/comments/drugs/how-racist-berkeley-cops-expanded-consciousness#disqus_thread

  10. kaptinemo says:

    Like I keep saying, the more they lose, the crazier they will get. Right on schedule.

    I’m still waiting, though, for the full-on mental meltdown, the speaking-in-tongues variety.

    Soon…soon…

  11. Mr_Alex says:

    Has anyone thought about putting the prohibs in prison which include acts not limited to violence and torture and other sadistic activities they advocate on drug users?

  12. Duncan20903 says:

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    Just the other day I found myself walking down the hall in the maternity ward of a hospital. So of course I decided to spend a few minutes cooing and jabbering baby talk at the infant display window. You can imagine my shock and horror when I peered though the viewing screen and learned that Big Prohibition has sired yet another of its bastard progeny. Ya know, if they keep this up the number of recreational drugs identified will end up being some several orders of magnitude larger than when than the counting began.

    Flakka

  13. N.T. Greene says:

    Oxygen is associated with 100% of human deaths in one way or another. H2O as well.

    Better ban existing, it’s associated with death.

  14. Servetus says:

    Arizona’s Yuvapai County Attorney Shiela Polk’s vitae(pdf) look good, perhaps a little too good, except for the prohibition parts. Her photos show up along with that of Kevin Sabet. She even uses Sabet’s ‘big marijuana’ boogeyman in one of her op-eds. Her husband, Eugene Polk, is an engineer and project manager at the Phoenix branch of Altep, Inc., a company offering litigation and legal forensics services. It would be interesting to know if Altep does business with Sheila’s department. A conflict of interest seems inevitable given the cozy arrangement.

    Both Sheila and Gene acquired their college degrees within Arizona. Sheila (age 59) looks ambitious. As County Attorney, she’s made the kinds of contacts needed to move up in Arizona politics, and beyond, should she so desire. The marijuana hysteria she spouts may be an attempt to burnish her Arizona political credentials, those requiring its candidates be racist, bigoted, deranged fanatics, and complete liars.

    Ultimately her little scheme will face blowback. Arizona voters who see her throwing their pro-marijuana votes under a bus will never forgive her, especially once marijuana becomes legal in the US. As with Melinda Haag, she’s picked the wrong bit of lunacy as a hook for her legal career. Her goofy op-eds will follow her for the rest of her life, just like a criminal record.

    • jean valjean says:

      This item from her resume caught my eye:
      “Development of Yavapai County Protocols for Drug Endangered Children Investigations.”
      In other words she’s a baby snatcher…

    • kaptinemo says:

      More proof of generational biases showing up in State policy. Consider how many remain of the previous generation that believed the anti-drug propaganda…and, of those, how many reside in AZ.

      Sunbelt States attracted them in the millions, skewing voter priorities for decades. This is reflected by the State’s legislative attitudes demonstrated toward cannabis. But more than that:

      Just as the forces of reform are coalescing, so have the forces of prohibition. The pressures caused by the impetus for re-legalization will cause their mania to be distilled down into rock-hard lunacy. And it is becoming ever more obvious how increasingly fanatical they will become as they lose.

      They are giving voice to their Inner Child, and that brat has always had a sneaking admiration for small mustaches, swastikas and jackboots. Which the public will see in due time. Which can only serve to help us.

    • Duncan20903 says:

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      I dunno Servetus, Arizona has one of, if not the weirdest domestic political cultures which I’ve observed. Arizona is the place where the voters approve a ballot initiative but subsequently see it kicked to the curb by a (very) simple majority in the Legislature. Then they get another initiative on the ballot which establishes a 75% supermajority requirement to modify laws which were enacted pursuant to voter approval of a ballot initiative.

      At the same time the citizenry appears to believe that Sheriff Joe walks on water. Well, except for the citizens that sit in the jury box when Sheriff Joe gets Arpaio County sued again. Did you know that Sheriff Joe has been bitching and moaning about all the legal fees he has to cough up to defend those lawsuits? That he thinks not only should the residents of Arizona cover all of the damages awarded but also his attorneys fees?

      I wonder, does the hogwash that Sheriff Joe regurgitates just effortlessly flow out of his pie hole or does he stay awake until the wee hours of the night inventing and polishing his turds of wisdom?

      Sheriff Arpaio: American Flag In Every Cell, Bread And Water For Those Who Mess With It
      6/17/2015

      /snip/
      Also, a few months ago I decided to put all inmates on a vegetarian diet — no more meat

      • Servetus says:

        Lord Joe’s Fiefdom Bed & Breakfast serves vegan? Does Sheriff Arpaio really care that his peasants are free of heart disease? Or is it because soy is cheaper than animal protein?

        Perhaps none of the above. We know Soylent Green is people. Perhaps Mr. Arpaio is feeding his prisoners to each other [cue scary music]. He’s a cheap sucker, either way. And he has no sense of style. Why the plain colors? Why not make his inmates wear the flowery pink underwear he himself wears?

        In Arizona, circling one’s wagons means living in a gated community. That’s so if Obama fails to win his third term as president, and black people riot all over America, the gated commune will feel protected behind its concrete walls and razor wire.

        Arizona is urban white flight in action. It has a lot of older retirees who still fly the Stars & Bars instead of Old Glory. Though as rebels, they’re not that tough. All one needs to do is find a way to shut down their air conditioning. Do that, and Phoenix will fry before rising from its ashes again.

        • Duncan20903 says:

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          Vegan? where in the world did that come from? I’m sure that his policy change was to save Arpaio County some money. I’m also sure that his jail will keep on serving jello, milk, powdered eggs and using leather restraints. The taxpayers have to pay for the judgments against him somehow. Depriving his prisoners to save the taxpayers money is his election campaign schtick after all.

          I seem to recall that a minor black market for Sheriff Joe’s special underwear popped up in and around his tent city jail. Some communities treat incarceration as a badge of honor and a rite of passage. So I’ve been told. I’m unaware of whether Sheriff Joe has stopped issuing pink underpants or not.

          Oh for the love of god! I’m having a conversation about another man’s underwear. If that doesn’t prove that prohibition has torn a hole in the very fabric of reality, I just don’t know what would succeed.

  15. jean valjean says:

    Psychedelic microdosing improves lives:

    “Even the father of LSD, Albert Hofman seems to have been a fan. In his book, Fadiman notes that Hofmann microdosed himself well into old age and quoted him as saying LSD “would have gone on to be used as Ritalin if it hadn’t been so harshly scheduled.”

    http://www.alternet.org/drugs/microdosing-new-low-key-way-use-psychedelics

  16. Simon says:

    Is Sheila Pork one of those American traditional conservatives who hates on socialism? Maybe she will find an unlikely ally.

    Let me introduce you to Sweden.

    Sweden is a liberal utopia, right?

    Let’s take a look-see at where their parties (even their left-wing parties) stand on the Devil’s harvest. Just hit that good ole translate button if you don’t speak viking:

    nyheter24.se/maktkamp24/774556-partierna-overens-nej-till-cannabis

    Reminds me of the useful idiots who used to praise East Germany while Stasi agents where staring at their comrades’ genitals through holes in their walls.

    Here’s some anecdotal evidence:

    http://www.reddit.com/r/trees/comments/2sic3j/welcome_to_sweden_the_only_country_where_the/

    Yay socialism! You good ole traditional values!

  17. Duncan20903 says:

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    Without any doubt everything prohibition is swirling the bowl. I just can’t believe how much I’m enjoying this spectacle. What I wouldn’t give to have the opportunity to see that woman’s face when she hears that the Arizona voters have approved regulated re-legalization on Election Day 2016.

    Did marijuana actually kill 62 kids in Arizona? Or…

    /snip/
    And I thought it was stoners who were supposed to lose touch with reality.

  18. ohutumvalik says:

    I wonder, where did Polk actually get the figure 62 which she claims in her article is the number of child deaths associated with cannabis in AZ? It seems she hasn’t even read the report…

    “Of the drugs and/or alcohol or prescription drugs associated with death, alcohol contributed to the deaths of 56 children (seven percent); marijuana was associated with 43 deaths (five percent); and methamphetamine was associated with 25 deaths (three percent).” (p 32 of the report).

    Wilful misinterpretation of the facts is one thing, but pulling scary figures out of one’s posterior is simply idiotic. Is it possible she’s a plant, one tasked with making prohibitches look even stupider than they actually are?

  19. DdC says:

    ☛ Sheila Pork Milkin It…
    intentionally misleading, moron, corrupt, or some combination?
    “The Department of Justice position has been not to let these dispensaries operate,” Coulson said. “Landlords will be at risk of having properties seized.”

    ☛ Safe pot? Tell that to the 62 kids who died by Sheila Polk, Yavapai County Attorney and vice chair of Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy.

    ☛ Marijuana Overdoses Kill 37 in Colorado On First Day of Legalization
    “We are seeing cardiac arrests, hypospadias, acquired trimethylaminuria and multiple organ failures. By next week the death toll could go as high as 200, maybe 300. Someone needs to step in and stop this madness. My god, why did we legalize marijuana? What were we thinking?”

    ☛ wait for more scientific research
    possible harms
    gateway drug.
    ~ DiFistein

    ☛ ‘After two puffs, I was turned into a bat’
    Marijuana use became a popular way of avoiding conscription, and murderers cited the brainwashing powers of “an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality and death” to plead diminished responsibility for their crimes. Their claims were frequently supported by an expert witness, the pharmacologist Dr James Munch, who claimed that “after two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat”. Sentences were commuted from death to imprisonment on Munch’s evidence, and Anslinger had to ask him to stop testifying.

    ☛ Pot Turns Man Into Bat
    Part of the reason that the government has been so ineffective in stopping people from using marijuana just might stem from the ludicrous, biased and often racist arguments it used to make the plant illegal in the first place.

    ☛ AXE MURDER – KILLS WHOLE FAMILY

    ☛ A seventeen-year-old boy in a Southern state smoked a marijuana cigarette handed him in a poolroom. When he arrived home, he imagined that his family had been conspiring to dismember him. To forestall this, he hacked his father, mother, sister and two brothers to death with an ax while they slept.
    — Collier’s (Magazine) – June 1949

    ☛ Then we have the case of a young boy in Florida. The story runs as follows: “A young boy who had become addicted to smoking marihuana cigarettes, in a fit of frenzy because, as he stated while still under the marihuana influence, a number of people were trying to cut off his arms and legs, seized an axe and killed his father, mother, two brothers and a sister, wiping out the entire family except himself.”
    — Mr. Anslinger 1937 Congressional Testimony

    ☛ Relation to Crime. Homicides, suicides and assaults, particularly those upon sex, are among the more grave indictments of marihuana. Perhaps the most lurid and frequently repeated case is that of a Florida youth, who, while said to have been under the influence, imagined some people were going to cut off his arms and legs; whereupon, in a frenzy, he seized an ax, killed his father and mother, 2 brothers and a sister.
    — American Journal of the Medical Sciences – 1938 pg 351

    ☛ A teen-age lad awoke in a southern jail and called for his parents. “How do you feel?” an officer asked him. “Wonderful!” the lad exclaimed. “Like a champion! I could lick Joe Louis.” After he told the officers about a high school party he attended the night before at which tea was smoked, he heard the story of what happened afterward: “Well, son, after the party, you went home, murdered your father, your mother and your sister with an axe. You set the house afire and when the firemen came you attacked them with an axe. Do you remember that?” No, he couldn’t. All he remembered was a terrible dream, in which he had to protect himself from dreadful monsters.
    — Fortnight Newsmagazine Aug 20, 1951

    ☛ Florida. A young man who had become addicted to smoking Marihuana cigarettes, while under the effects of the drug, imagined that a number of people were trying to cut off his arms and legs, seized an axe and killed his father, mother, two brothers and a sister, wiping out the entire family. — Finger Print & Identification Magazine March 1938 pp3

    ☛ A 16 year old kills his entire family of five in Florida;—Chicago Tribune Jan 17, 1962 pg 5 — “Reefers: A Fast Road Downhill” by Harry J. Anslinger; Will Oursler

    ☛ Murdered parents, sister, two brothers with an ax after smoking marijuana; unaware of actions until next day. — The Truth about Marijuana — Stepping Stone To Destruction – June 1967

    ☛ Body Count: Moral Poverty–
    and how to Win America’s War Against Crime and Drugs
    William Bennett, John DiIulio, and John Walters
    Most shocking to them is the neglect of children:

    New York Nine Year Old Girl With Dravet Syndrome Dies Without Medical Marijuana

    ☛ Many parents do not want them or do not want to raise them; many schools do not educate them;

    Medical Marijuana Mom’s Son Seized After He Talks About Pot’s Benefits

    ☛ many government agencies are too inundated to assist them.

    Guess Who’s Profiting From Pot Prohibition?

    ☛ All this is giving rise to what the authors call “superpredators,” kids from 13 to 16 who apparently feel nothing as they kill, rob or rape. Refraining from any rigorous systemic or economic analyses, they ascribe this sad state of affairs to moral poverty and think that religion offers the best solution.

    “Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . we need believing people.”
    Adolf Hitler, April 26, 1933,
    Nazi Vatican Concordant of 1933

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