Arizona Legalization Campaign Challenges Attorney to Prove Alcohol is Safer than Marijuana

This past Wednesday April 6th, a conference was held in front of the Maricopa County Administration Building in Phoenix, Arizona. The conference was held by The Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, the leading marijuana legalization campaign in the state. The reason for this conference was for them to issue a challenge to an Arizona attorney who opposes their campaign, and to challenge him to find facts to put behind his words.

The group called out Attorney Bill Montgomery, who has been outspoken about his stance against marijuana legalization, claiming that marijuana is too dangerous to regulate for adult use. Considering the plethora of information proving that marijuana is safer than alcohol, this is quite the statement and was proven to be more of an outdated wives tale than anything else.

In light of his statements, the campaign decided that it was unfair that $8,050 of his campaign contributions came from alcohol distributors, when alcohol is clearly more of a danger than marijuana ever has been or will be.

The group has issued Mr. Montgomery a challenge – we will see if he holds rises to it. The CRMLA would like him to prove that marijuana is more dangerous than alcohol – or else give back those contributions.

They are looking for him to disprove one of the following:

• Alcohol is significantly more toxic than marijuana, making death by overdose far more likely with alcohol.
• The health effects from alcohol consumption cause tens of thousands of more deaths in the U.S. annually than the health effects from the consumption of marijuana.
• The use of alcohol is more likely to be a contributing factor in acts of violence than the use of marijuana.

“We are tired of seeing Mr. Montgomery demonize marijuana, so we are simply challenging him to prove that it is more harmful than alcohol,” Holyoak said. “If he is unable to do so, we are calling on him to return the campaign contributions he has received from members of the alcohol industry.

“We are not attacking alcohol, alcohol consumers, or even alcohol distributors,” Holyoak said. “We are attacking Mr. Montgomery’s hypocrisy for accepting alcohol-related campaign contributions while advocating for the continued punishment of adults who prefer to use a less harmful substance.”

Seeing as April is National Alcohol Awareness Month, what better time to put to rest an age old argument that has no place in modern society? I love that this group of people called Montgomery out on the hypocritical actions – if you believe one thing is dangerous, then you cannot be supportive of something that is proven to be even more harmful, now can you?