Anti-Medical Marijuana Committee Fails To Register Published URL, Hilarity Ensues

from the you-can't-like,-OWN-a-URL,-man dept

Tue, Sep 18th 2012 2:57pm — Tim Cushing

Time for a pop quiz: get out your no. 2 iPads and see if you can figure out which steps in this process are out of order.

It's election season, a time when man's (and more recently, woman's) thoughts turn towards shutting off the TV, radio and phone until mid-November. But! Things must be voted on, including such controversial issues as legalizing medical marijuana and authorizing dispensaries. As an opponent of weed-based medicines, you vow to fight this with every ounce/gram of your being. You set your plan in action.

1. Pick a name for your committee. ("No on Question 3")
2. Pick out a suitable URL ("votenoonquestion3.org")
3. Get your committee and its pertinent information added to the official voters' guide (both print and online.)
4. Register URL.
5. Become aghast.

Can anyone point out where Vote No on Question 3 went wrong? Here are some visual aids, taken from votenoonquestion3.org:

You see, the internet is like magic. And like most magic, it can be used for entertainment purposes. All the do-gooding in the world doesn't amount to much if you forget to register your URL. While you're busy enjoying that "new ink" smell of freshly printed Voter's Guides, someone quicker on the draw is undermining your "marijuana is bad" ~~propaganda~~ ~~proselytizing~~ information with hilariously over-the-top headlines.

The good news is that the online voters' guide sports the corrected URL: mavotenoonquestion3.com

The bad news is that the paper version will carry the old URL permanently. Of course, very few people are willing to type in a URL by hand, but as news of this blunder spreads, the fake site with the real URL will be receiving much more attention, voters' guide correction or no.

Here's the official reaction from No on Question 3 spokesman, Kevin Sabet:

"It's funny and upsetting, I guess, at the same time."

Yeah. Largely the first part. And to think, the committee can't even blame a late afternoon smokeout for the mental slip.

This statement, however, seems both more on point and more disingenuous:

The group sent out a press release saying proponents of medical marijuana were tampering with the democratic process through “underhanded efforts.”

Sabet admits the committee made a mistake and yet, the press release attempts to paint No on Question 3 as the victim of villainous pot smokers rather than treating it like the self-inflicted wound it is.

Oh, and here's more bad news for the "No" side:

The Globe notes that the No on Question 3 campaign has managed to collect all of $600 so far, compared to the $1 million or so that supporters of the initiative have received from Peter Lewis, a longtime patron of drug policy reform.

Maybe it's time to admit your fears of a weed-loaded America are overblown, especially when you've just been outmaneuvered (and outspent) by a bunch of stoners.

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Filed Under: errors, marijuana, politics, registration, urls, vote no

25 Comments

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gorehound (profile), 18 Sep 2012 @ 3:05pm

I need a Twinkie like I need a hole in the head !
Just wanted to say I do love my weed and first smoked a joint in the fall of 1968.Still going strong and not doing wrong ! No hard drugs in this home and also NO TWINKIES.
That is right, there are no Twinkies,Candies, or Soda.
Say No To Twinkies.Those things will rot your gut.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2012 @ 3:14pm

I just wanted to say that I congratulate the person who spotted this and immediately took advantage of it.
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GMacGuffin (profile), 18 Sep 2012 @ 3:16pm

Some Pretzel Logic...
If they had been high, they would have taken more time to think it through, for fear of forgetting something, because they were high.
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LokiRaziel, 18 Sep 2012 @ 3:20pm

Awesome
It's like Bill Hicks said: "There's a war on drugs and the people that are winning are the ones fucked up on drugs."
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Sep 2012 @ 3:26pm

Man who stands on toilet seat
... is high on pot
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Divide by Zero (profile), 18 Sep 2012 @ 4:20pm

Which just goes to show, focussing on your self-righteousness gets you exactly nowhere. I hate weed. I also hate tobacco & alcohol though, and out of the three I know which tends to cause the most damage and it ain't the illegal one. Far as I'm concerned, as long as the smoke isn't getting blown in my face, people can do whatever the hell they want. Dunno why some people get their knickers in such a twist.
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Pixelation, 18 Sep 2012 @ 4:50pm

Re: I need a Twinkie like I need a hole in the head !
"Say No To Twinkies.Those things will rot your gut."

No kidding. Ho-hos all the way!
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abc gum, 18 Sep 2012 @ 5:23pm

"Anti-Medical Marijuana Committee Fails To Register Published URL"

And you want to be my latex salesman !?
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silverscarcat (profile), 18 Sep 2012 @ 5:43pm

Re: Re: I need a Twinkie like I need a hole in the head !
I prefer oatmeal cream cookies.

Ho-hos are bland and tasteless to me.
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Liz (profile), 18 Sep 2012 @ 5:56pm

They were going to link their own website. But then they got high.
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The Groove Tiger (profile), 18 Sep 2012 @ 9:17pm

I think there's only one thing left to say...

What the hell were they smoking?
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monkyyy, 18 Sep 2012 @ 11:22pm

Re:
BECAUSE TERRORISMS
think of the children all be given weed by terrorist to try to make them stop the strong 'merican history of startingc pointless wars; how strange and terrifying would to world be today if we didnt start these wars? lets just focus on high children for now
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2012 @ 2:49am

outsmarted by stoners
how embarassing ... for them
and funny for everyone else who isn't trying to impose bigoted views onto the rest out of a sense of misplaced righteousness. If you don't want weed don't smoke / eat it. problem solved.
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Ninja (profile), 19 Sep 2012 @ 3:27am

Oh I see now. It's all an evil plot from Big Twinkie, Marijuana Masnick and Google (!?) to hinder the authorities efforts against drug dealers. Mike you are a slimy ball drug apologist. Think of the children!

/bob

I swear I haven't smoked anything!
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Ninja (profile), 19 Sep 2012 @ 4:36am

Re: outsmarted by stoners
I'm inclined to believe they are thinking about all the people out there that aren't capable of using the weed without getting addicted and destroying their lives, unfortunately. However there are other ways to deal with this than forbidding it. Alcohol has the same issues and yet we've seen how well prohibiting it worked.

Some bigots will claim that if you think like that then you should decriminalize all drugs but it completely misses the fact that marijuana is a very light drug that has a limited addictive power if compared to heavier drugs. Decriminalizing marijuana will free resources for those heavier and damaging drugs.
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Sep 2012 @ 5:15am

What are these people smoking? Deny people their medicine? Deny Doctors all the cash deals?
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weneedhelp (profile), 19 Sep 2012 @ 7:28am

Re: Re: outsmarted by stoners
"people out there that aren't capable of using the weed without getting addicted and destroying their lives, unfortunately."

Reefer madness man. Stop the madness.
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weneedhelp (profile), 19 Sep 2012 @ 7:29am

Re: Re: Re: outsmarted by stoners
MMMkay?
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Davol, 19 Sep 2012 @ 10:58am

The real conspiracy
Hostess would love you all to think that legalizing marijuana will cause an unprecidented shortage of Twinkies, but I'll let you in on the real story. Hostess and increased twinkie production over 75% since the introduction of this "medical marijuana" initiative. The fact is that Hostess has donated over 975 thousand dollars to getting this put on the ballot. That explains where all those stoners got their million dollars from. I know a lot more, but for now this is all I can say. Remember the truth is out there.
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Andrew N. C, 19 Sep 2012 @ 5:58pm

I'm no pot smoker, but there's one thing i can't stand' it's the fact that pot's illegal while alcohol and cigarettes have no problem being sold anywhere. People talk about the (supposed) negatives of pot and all i can think is, "oh, really? well cigarettes and alcohol both cause terrible HEALTH problems. pot causes what? munchies and [potential] laziness? so F***ing what?!! Oh wait, plus the THC, CBD, and CBN in cannabis actually fight tumors, kill free radicals, and increase oxygen intake to the body by the expansion of the capillaries."... All positives that majorly offset the negative of [possible] laziness and lack of motivation (which is the ONLY relevant negative)... tons of people have trouble with motivation. weed isn't making people less motivated. people who are unmotivated who smoke weed make people think that weed makes everyone unmotivated... god damn!... anyway, let people do what they want if it's not harming others. Give me one instance of someone harmed by weed and i'll consider your "what about how terrible pot is for you" statement... in any regard, weed should be completely legal, and every drug in the world is being dealt with completely wrong (in the U.S.A. at least... I'm just a drunk American though, what do I know?)

P.S. I also believe that if weed is outlawed, you might as well make Religion illegal. Religion is probably 50 times more dangerous, in a universal sense... Not a sermon, just a thought. Peace.
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btrussell (profile), 19 Sep 2012 @ 7:11pm

They got stoned
and they missed it!
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NobodyImportant, 19 Sep 2012 @ 11:35pm

Re: Re: Re: outsmarted by stoners
That film was blatantly propaganda for an agenda.
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Anonymous Coward, 24 Sep 2012 @ 2:29am

Re:
to bad most of the money is made in the pharmaceutical industry
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Kanjirathinga, 26 May 2013 @ 9:53pm

thanks!
If they had been high, they would have taken more time to think it through, for fear of forgetting something, because they were high.
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MMJMerchantAccounts, 6 Nov 2013 @ 8:56am

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