Governor Pete Rickets took the covid era as an opportunity to expand access to alcohol in his home state of Nebraska. With no legislative process, the Governor issued an executive order to allow, among other things, alcohol “to go” and “entertainment zones” to allow alcoholic beverages outside restaurants. Additionally, he ended the restrictions on sale at gas stations. The sweeping reform, in the name of “helping restaurants” during the pandemic, adds up to a state being awash in booze, or even more so. A recent analysis of CDC data placed Nebraska as “one of America’s drunkest states” (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/03/08/these-americas-drunkest-states/406342002/) a dubious honor but one in which the Governor is complicit or rather one he supports and facilitates. Few things seem less logical than serving alcohol “to go”, pandemic or not. With one of the highest rates of drunk driving fatalities in the nation, this is nothing short of rank stupidity on the part of the Governor. This makes no sense in terms of public safety but it might make sense to the Governor’s bank account. Rickets, from a wealthy family, seems to have an interest in the sale of alcohol. The holdings of the Rickets family include the Chicago Cubs who sell a whopping $500,000 in beer…per game. One way to keep your beer cronies happy would be to expand the availability of their products Additionally, Rickets took campaign contributions from beer, wine, and distilled spirits concerns. Rickets loves booze, it makes him rich and finances his campaigns.
Fast forward to a young, dynamic state senator, Anna Wishart, being compelled by personal stories and other states success with medicinal cannabis to introduce legislation to legalize medical cannabis in Nebraska . Wishart won her seat with shoe leather hard work, personally visiting more than 20,000 households over two years. In one such visit she met with a family desperately looking for solutions for their son’s epilepsy. The young boy suffered many seizure, daily, with minimal success and severe side effects from control medications. The boy’s mother told of a zombie-like kid reaping minimal benefits. Cannabis, can be an effective treatment for some people who suffer epilepsy but trying this would have made the family “criminals” in their home state. Ultimately the family found success with treating the boy, helping his seizures and allowing him to be a typical dog and lego obsessed 9 year old. The rub? They had to move to Colorado to do it. Other stories relayed to Wishart included success treating side effects from cancer treatments and how cannabis can help elderly people with the aches and pains of growing older. Ultimately, Wishart took the bold step as a freshman senator of introducing a bill to legalize medicinally cannabis. The bill is currently in committee and polling nicely, even in rural and red Nebraska. But what of Governor Pete?
Last week Rickets held a press conference to comment on the bill. Nobody was surprised when Rickets surrendered science and common sense and overtly lied about cannabis stating “ If you’re going to legalize marijuana, you’re going to kill your kids”. Ummm, no Governor, legally dispensed and regulated cannabis won’t “kill kids” but you getting cozy with the alcohol industry might. From a statistical analysis, it will. When alcohol access and consumption rises, so do the consequences. According to the Nebraska liquor authority, alcohol consumption has risen 31% since Rickets executive order allowing Nebraska to swim in booze. Does that mean a 31% increase in traffic fatalities, violence between partners, fights, domestic disputes, sexual assault and all the other consequences of alcohol use? It certainly could. (https://lcc.nebraska.gov/sites/lcc.nebraska.gov/files/January%202021%20Month%20End-Website.pdf). Additionally, the last tax raise in alcohol in Nebraska was in 2003, raising the tax to .31/100 per gallon. Imagine the Cornhuskers in the hunt for a national championship and it’s a big game weekend. Could a fraternity at the university do more than .31/100 worth of damage with a gallon of booze? The answer is most certainly a resounding “yes”. Here’s the bottom line: in Nebraska, one can get a curbside meal, along with a a margarita in a take away cup, drink outside, buy alcohol at the gas station and be a member of one of America’s “drunkest states” all of that is legal and even encouraged but giving ones child cannabis to treat a serious condition renders one a criminal and forces a decision of if to move or not. Nice work, Governor.
Rickets knows better. He holds a bachelors degree in biology from the notoriously academically rigorous University of Chicago. He can read data, he can understand that cannabis has no lethal dose. While nobody thinks kids should be able to freely access cannabis, or any medication for that matter, it doesn’t “kill kids”, in fact, it can’t. Tylenol can, with more than 24 deaths annually and a need for several liver transplants, Tylenol is literally more dangerous than cannabis. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3447018/ ). Whatever his rationale, Governor Rickets is knowingly denying his constituents medicine. He is encouraging a form of intoxication, alcohol, that, by any metric is exponentially more dangerous than cannabis. Maybe the most offensive component of this is Rickets is lying and he must think the voters of Nebraska are stupid.