"Fuck it, we're all going back to my place."
Medical marijuana has ruined the sanctity of the local news broadcast. Anchorage, AK CBS affiliate KTVA was doing a report on a medical cannabis operation called the AK Cannabis Club in the semi-lawless, secession-crazed home of Sarah "My Kids Will Beat You Up" Palin. Part of what made the medical cannibis grower such an attractive story for the station, presumably, was the company's shadowy, mysterious secret owner. The club itself is not incredibly unusual — it connects patients with legitimate Alaskan medical marijuana cards with licensed medical marijuana growers (this kind of direct connection is necessary in states with medical marijuana laws but murky dispensary laws), and due to the legal gray area, gives patients the opportunity to give "donations" to the grower to compensate for the cost of cultivating the plant.
Reporter Charlo Greene apparently decided to follow in the Governor Who Was Too Important To Govern's footsteps, because what she did at the end of the broadcast can only be described as "going rogue." Perhaps upset by the unbalanced hit piece she had just run on her own company, she unexpectedly announced that was the secret owner. She then said she was resigning to advocate full-time for legalization and Alaska's Ballot Measure 2, and unveiled the greatest newscaster sign-off since Walter Cronkite's iconic "I'm Walter Cronkite and everything you just heard was a corporate lie."
Here's what Greene said, in case you missed it: "Now everything you've heard is why I, the actual owner of the Alaska Cannabis Club, will be dedicating all of my energy toward fighting for freedom and fairness, which begins with legalizing marijuana here in Alaska. And as for this job, well, not that I have a choice but, fuck it, I quit.”
She did not, indeed, have a choice because according to the Alaska Dispatch News, KTVA made a statement shortly thereafter "We sincerely apologize for the inappropriate language used by a KTVA reporter during her live presentation on the air tonight. The employee has been terminated." You can't terminate her! She already terminated herself.
As for why she did this, besides to be awesome, Greene told the Dispatch News "Because I wanted to draw attention to this issue...[of] medical marijuana. Ballot Measure 2 is a way to make medical marijuana real... most patients didn’t know the state didn’t set up the framework to get patients their medicine."
Ballot Measure 2 "would allow people age 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and up to six plants. It would also make the manufacture, sale and possession of marijuana paraphernalia legal." The opponents of the bill didn't fail to capitalize on the Greene incident, and their tweet on the matter showed a slightly different take on what happened: "#KTVA reporter covering ballot measure 2 loses her mind, confesses to being an owner of the cannabis club and quits while on the air."
Reefer madness!
(by Johnny McNulty)