Photo by Shelby Drummond via Flickr
Dan Bartkowiak: The real hit behind Mike Tyson’s marijuana push in Pennsylvania
The life of Mike Tyson includes 44 professional knockouts, two felony convictions for rape and drug possession, and now one photo-op with Pennsylvania lawmakers in Harrisburg.
This week, the marijuana industry arranged breakfast with the registered sex offender, drawing attention to their push for state lawmakers to pass Senate Bill 120, a bill that would force every Pennsylvania community to allow pot shops selling marijuana for recreational use.
Pennsylvania is squarely in the marijuana industry’s sights, with a significant uptick in lobbyists in Harrisburg and millions of dollars spent to sway state lawmakers toward recreational legalization.
But Mike Tyson? While some may downplay his past, he continues to claim marijuana is “not a drug” and openly admits to daily, high-volume use, spending $40,000 a month on personal marijuana.
The question every state lawmaker should ask: What does Mike Tyson gain if Pennsylvania changes its law on marijuana use? A lot. According to Forbes, sales from his marijuana brand totaled $45 million in 2023, with projections for this year hitting $75 million. His branded products include All-In-One Vapes with super-strength potency (over 90 percent THC) that come in “sweet, fruity, and nutty flavors” such as Mike’s Meringue.
A conflict of interest for Iron Mike? The answer couldn’t be more ironclad.
We don’t need celebrity endorsements to shape Pennsylvania public policy. We need credible evidence on public health and safety. Paid lobbyists disguising “addiction-for-profit” schemes cannot replace parents, health experts, and law enforcement highlighting marijuana’s real-world impact.
Big Tobacco-style corporations dominate the marijuana industry. Trulieve, which operates nearly two dozen dispensaries in Pennsylvania, spent $141 million in Florida in a failed attempt to push an amendment to legalize marijuana for recreational use. As Gov. Ron DeSantis described, “They’re not doing that because they care about the best interests of Florida. They’re doing it because they want to make profits.”
This recent visit by Tyson brought attention to the marijuana issue, including a mobile billboard outside the breakfast that highlighted two tragic stories. Jennifer, a mother from a Philadelphia suburb, shared how marijuana “stole my son.” Her son has been hospitalized thirteen times, jailed three times, and now suffers from schizophrenia, despite no family history of mental illness. He became paranoid, delusional, and manic, even once trying to jump from a moving car because he believed the Taliban was after him. All of this is associated with marijuana use.
Another story involved State Representative Brian Smith (R-Punxsutawney), whose son died from a drug overdose. Smith traces his son’s drug habit back to marijuana use. On recreational legalization, Smith states plainly, “It’s not worth the negatives.”
Data and evidence reinforce these tragic stories. States experimenting with recreational legalization have seen more children in the ER due to marijuana exposure, higher rates of drugged driving and fatalities, and rising mental health problems. As one study found, frequent marijuana use among eleventh graders in California increased following recreational legalization.
Modern marijuana products are highly potent and engineered to look nothing like the marijuana of the past. As the American Addiction Centers puts it, frequent marijuana use “is associated with the development of physiological dependence, a distinct withdrawal syndrome, and addiction.”
In states like Colorado, there are more pot shops than Starbucks and McDonald’s combined. And if the industry gets its way, it will force Pennsylvania communities to allow pot shops selling marijuana for recreational use. This problematic environment would occur if Senate Bill 120 were to become law.
There is one thing in common among health organizations like the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Association for Addiction Professionals, law enforcement agencies such as the Fraternal Order of Police and PA Chiefs of Police, AAA, and editorial boards from Pennsylvania outlets like the LNP and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. They all oppose marijuana legalization for recreational use.
If Pennsylvania values public health and safety, if we value the evidence rather than celebrity endorsements, this case is clear: The costs of recreational legalization of marijuana are immense.
For policymakers, the evidence should deliver a knockout punch.
Dan Bartkowiak is the Chief Strategy Officer for Pennsylvania Family Council.
The Prohibition of cannabis and Reefer Madness are only pushed and believed by a very small, lunatic-fringe minority of irrational looney-tune Holier Than Thou types that are on a never ending little personal moral-crusade and witch-hunt against relatively benign cannabis and it’s consumers. The rest of us sane, rational, normal Americans just laugh our butts off at and mock utterly desperate lying prohibitionists and their ridiculous Reefer-Madness-Rhetoric as the comedy show they truly are!
The whole “Today’s cannabis is so much stronger…” myth is nothing more than prohibitionist fear mongering propaganda, and completely false. Intentionally fabricated in order to desperately try to scare the public away from so strongly supporting the full federal legalization of cannabis nationwide. There has always been very potent strains of cannabis. Even in the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. Ever heard of Acapulco Gold, Maui-Wowie, Panama Red , Colombian Gold, Bubblegum, Train Wreck, Northern Lights and Sour Diesel to name just a few of the many, many potent strains of decades past?
Fear of Cannabis Legalization Nationwide is unfounded. Not based on any science or fact whatsoever. So please prohibitionists, we beg you to give your scare tactics, “Conspiracy Theories” and “Doomsday Scenarios” over the inevitable Legalization of Cannabis Nationwide a rest. Nobody is buying them anymore these days. Okay?
Furthermore, if all prohibitionists get when they look into that nice, big and shiny crystal ball of theirs, while wondering about the future of cannabis legalization, is horror, doom, and despair, well then I suggest they return that thing as quickly as possible and reclaim the money they shelled out for it, since it’s obviously defective.
The prohibition of cannabis has not decreased the supply nor the demand for cannabis at all. Not one single iota, and it never will. Just a huge and complete waste of our tax dollars to continue criminalizing citizens for choosing a natural, non-toxic, relatively benign plant proven to be much safer than alcohol.
If prohibitionists are going to take it upon themselves to worry about “saving us all” from ourselves, then they need to start with the drug that causes more death and destruction than every other drug in the world COMBINED, which is alcohol!
Why do prohibitionists feel the continued need to vilify and demonize cannabis when they could more wisely focus their efforts on a real, proven killer, alcohol, which again causes more destruction, violence, and death than all other drugs, COMBINED?
Prohibitionists really should get their priorities straight and/or practice a little live and let live. They’ll live longer, happier, and healthier, with a lot less stress if they refrain from being bent on trying to control others through Draconian Cannabis Laws.
What we certainly don’t need are anymore people who feel justified in appointing themselves to be self-deputized morality police.
We are very capable of choosing for ourselves if we want to consume cannabis, a far less dangerous choice over alcohol, and we definitely don’t need anyone dictating how we should live our own lives.
We can’t just lock up everyone who does things prohibitionists don’t personally approve of.
“Cannabis is 114 times safer than drinking alcohol”
“Cannabis may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say”
“Cannabis may be even safer than previously thought, researchers say New study: We should stop fighting Cannabis legalization and focus on alcohol and tobacco instead By Christopher Ingraham February 23
Compared with other recreational drugs — including alcohol — Cannabis may be even safer than previously thought. And researchers may be systematically underestimating risks associated with alcohol use.
Those are the top-line findings of recent research published in the journal Scientific Reports, a subsidiary of Nature. Researchers sought to quantify the risk of death associated with the use of a variety of commonly used substances. They found that at the level of individual use, alcohol was the deadliest substance, followed by heroin and cocaine.”
-Washington Post
“The report discovered that Cannabis is 114 times less deadly than alcohol. Researchers were able to determine this by comparing the lethal doses with the amount of typical use. Through this approach, Cannabis had the lowest mortality risk to users out of all the drugs they studied. In fact—because the numbers were crossed with typical daily use—Cannabis is the only drug that tested as “low risk.”
-Complex
REEFER MADNESS IS DUMB. END REEFER MADNESS AND LEGALIZE FEDERALLY NATIONWIDE NOW!
Never in my life have I seen such a wanton display of well poisoning. I get it, you can’t sleep soundly at night without the reassuring pressure of a boot on your neck. The letterhead of this website includes the word Liberty but I saw a lot of puritanical propaganda in this article. Libertarians advocate for personal responsibility and not worrying about what their neighbor is up to. I think the writer of this article needs to have a conversation with himself about how disingenuous he is as a human being.