In a testimony almost too facepalm-worthy to cover in non-satirical news, DEA special agent Matt Fairbanks presented to Utah’s Senate panel a rather unconventional argument against the implementation of a medical marijuana bill: what about the rabbits?
“I come to represent the actual science, and I come with some severe concerns,” Fairbanks prefaced. In his experience as a member of the “marijuana eradication” team, he witnessed grow sites with “rabbits that had cultivated a taste for the marijuana, where one of them refused to leave us, and we took all the marijuana around him, but his natural instincts to run were somehow gone."
Fairbanks goes on to cite other environmental concerns associated with deforestation and pesticides, issues that apply to all agriculture – not just cannabis. But perhaps he doesn’t realize that a legal and regulated system would allow cultivators to operate in farmlands far away from the mountain-dwelling fauna.
“I deal with facts. I deal with science.” Fairbanks said. “I stand behind the information that is presented by our researchers and scientists that look out for the public’s good.” So in the eyes of the DEA, the public good is constituted by the incarceration of non-violent drug offenders, the spending of millions of tax dollars on a failed War on Drugs, the withholding of medicine from the sick and dying, the perpetuation of transnational drug trafficking and violence, and last but certainly not least, the sobriety of this great nation’s rabbit population.
The panel apparently didn’t share the same concern for couchlocked rabbits as Fairbanks and approved the bill for passage to the Senate, where it will be discussed next week.
(Hat tip to Washington Post for this editorial gem.)
Image credit: Chrisbb via Photopin CC
