Police: Father forced autistic children to smoke synthetic marijuana

[The Straight Story]

Police: Father forced autistic children to smoke synthetic marijuana
Man posted video of kids smoking on Facebook, police say

PALM BAY, Fla. -

Police arrested a father after they say he gave synthetic marijuana to his two autistic children--ages 7 and 10-- and posted a video recording of it on Facebook.

Palm Bay police responded to a domestic battery call involving an elderly person Tuesday, where they found synthetic pot and a smoking pipe.

According to a police report, officers also found video posted on Facebook showing Scott Crawley forcing his youngest child, who appeared nervous and scared, to smoke the synthetic marijuana.

Crawley told police he gave his children synthetic pot to make a statement about legalizing the use of cannabis in treating autism.

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/Police-Father-forced-autistic-children-to-smoke-synthetic-marijuana/-/1637132/7644016/-/h0h1ps/-/index.html

[TheWraith]

1. Okay, aside from the obvious, there's one other problem...

"Synthetic marijuana" is NOT marijuana. There is no known chemical similarity between the dozens of different "cocktails" of synthetics (which have no regulation or assurance of safety) and actual marijuana other than that both are supposed to be smoked, and both supposedly get you high. But with no chemical similarity, there's no reason to assume that synthetic marijuana contains any real medicinal value.

[Trillo]

2. I read the story, and while you may make a good point,

there is an inference in the phrasing (that I perceive, maybe it's not there) that this guy has been using it for some time, and then made a recording of some kind. However, there's also the explicit the children were "nervous and scared". If the children were nervous and scared, then could it have been "first time" "camera shyness", or "first time" "never done this before". And this is besides my obvious observation (which may be different from yours).

There are plenty of people who have no choice but to doctor themselves, find medicines, and treat themselves. That's poverty. Rather widespread from what I can tell, over 50% of those living here last I heard....

[TheWraith]

5. None of that in any way justifies this.

"There are plenty of people who have no choice but to doctor themselves, find medicines, and treat themselves."

Which in no way makes them actually qualified to do so, or for that matter implies that it's anything but a stupid idea. This man is feeding his small children a cocktail of unknown chemicals that has been acknowledged to have killed several adults who did nothing more than smoke the stuff. I seriously doubt anyone would have any doubt that his behavior was completely insane if, for instance, he'd given them a few doses of meth in the name of "self medication" even though meth has more known medicinal value than these synthetics.

Also, no, the US does not have a 50% poverty rate. Try 15%.

[Trillo]

6. No, what I read said 50%.

The point I thought was obvious, was namely that giving marijuana to your kid (synthetic pot? not sure exactly what that is), without some kind of recommendation, may not be the brightest move. I'm not sure what you thought was obvious, some of us need it spelled out explicitly.

Regarding the 50% poverty figure, I never did find the link where I read it, but I found something very close, and a number of sites seem to have something similar:

Half of America is officially poor
While it’s no surprise that nearly 50 million Americans live below the poverty line, new statistics from the US Census show that almost 100 million others are counted as low-income citizens, making half of the population of America officially poor.

read more...

So, it seems my mistake was remembering "poverty" instead of "poor", which gave you the opportunity to challenge it. I rather doubt that folks who are poor are going to be making lots of doctors appointments for anyone. I'd guess that's why I read recently that some one removed their kids' braces with some pliers.

[RainDog]

9. it's not cannabis. it's other substances

Last edited Fri Jan 6, 2012, 01:19 AM - Edit history (1)

so any claims about the value of cannabis as medicine don't apply to a synthetic mix of other things.

iow, just because something is called "synthetic marjuana" that doesn't mean it's marijuana.

and the guy is giving this to his kids.

this demonstrates two kinds of poor judgment.

[RainDog]

3. yeah. the guy is a wad of stupid n/t

[ArcticFox]

4. That could be the stupidest thing I've ever heard

At the same time, if it were real marijuana, I would say there was little likelihood of harm and not so stupid.

[RZM]

7. Synthetic marijuana is really awful stuff

Somebody convinced me to smoke it once. It's truly terrible. It's like all of the paranoia but none of the high.

[Brickbat]

8. Synthetic marijuana is nasty, nasty shit.