Rupert Murdoch's Long War on Marijuana
by Tim Beck
On June 1, a bizarre new twist was injected into the war on cannabis by Fox News pundit Laura Ingraham. On her TV show Ingraham Angle, she blamed the outbreak of mass shootings in the U.S. on marijuana use. Her claim was quickly seconded by Fox host Tucker Carlson, followed in quick succession by Allysia Finley in the Wall Street Journal and Miranda Devine in the New York Post. The stories captured attention across the country.
“There is mounting scientific evidence of a connection between the increase in violent behavior among young people and regular and sustained cannabis use,” Ingraham declared. “These are the eyes of some of the mass killers who have reportedly been regular pot users. Look at them,” she said, as scary looking photos of various killers appeared on the TV screen.
Tucker Carlson blamed the murder of six people [ultimately seven] on the Fourth of July in Highland Park, Illinois, on social media, porn, video games, nagging feminists and young men being “high on government-endorsed weed.”
For the record, this kind of talk is nothing new with Carlson. On March 2, 2021, a world disaster was predicted on Carlson’s show by his guest, Dr. Marc Siegel.
Speaking about COVID, Siegel theorized that humanity could become extinct from COVID and that a big contributor to this coming apocalypse was marijuana.
“Lockdown libido occurs when everybody is shut down for too long. You know what they do? They gain weight. They get obese. You know what obesity does? Drives down testosterone and sperm count. You drink more alcohol. You know what alcohol does? It makes estrogen out of testosterone . . . cigarettes . . . vapes . . . and probably the biggest culprit of all according to reproductive health specialists I spoke with tonight is marijuana. It drives down sperm count.”
The New York Post headline screamed: “Did Reefer Drive the Highland Park Parade ‘Killer’ Robert Crimo to Madness?” The Post went on to explain, “his evil act is unfathomable, but he does fit a familiar pattern of mass killers: alienated young male stoners who appear to be in the grip of a distinctly American madness.”
The Wall Street Journal was less sensational and more pseudoscientific. “Young people are especially vulnerable to cannabis’s effects . . . a study last year found that young people with such mood disorders as depression who are also addicted to pot were 3.2 times as likely to commit self-harm and die of homicide—often after initiating violence—than those who weren’t.”
The Journal did not name the source of the “study” it cited. That does not mean a study is not somewhere.
When researching this column, it was difficult to figure out why a respected business news source like the Wall Street Journal would align itself with political hacks like Ingraham and Carlson and a sensationalist tabloid like the New York Post. What, if anything, did they have in common?
Well, they all have common ownership. Billionaire media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch is the man.
Murdoch, now a spry 91-year-old, has long been a big voice in national politics, going back to the days of President Ronald Reagan and his then secretary of education Bill Bennett. (Bennett later became America’s first “Drug Czar,” and on Larry King Live in 1989 said he had no qualms about beheading drug dealers.) Among other things, according to published news reports, Murdoch himself worked with the CIA under the Reagan administration to create a media “perception management” program, to wean America from the “Vietnam syndrome.” This would allow the U.S. to play a more muscular role in foreign policy.
Murdoch also supported a clandestine effort to support guerrillas seeking to overthrow the government of Nicaragua in 1985.
The resulting scandal almost brought down the Reagan administration for illegally bypassing Congress to fund the insurrectionists. Among the funding sources for the plan were companies connected with Latin American drug dealers. While there is no evidence Murdoch and his team worked directly with the drug dealers in the Iran-Contra Affair, it is plausible he knew about it.
Nonetheless, like our late president and the former drug czar Bill Bennett, Murdoch has been very clear that he does not like illegal drugs, including marijuana.
In an ironic twist of fate, Murdoch’s granddaughter, aspiring pop star Charlotte Freud, 22, entered rehab for serious drug problems in May 2021. She is doing better now by most reports.
According to the UK’s Daily Mail, Freud was nicknamed “K-angel” in high school because of her fondness for the horse tranquilizer ketamine. “Cocaine made me feel sick. But after doing my first line of ketamine I thought, I’m addicted,” she explained.
So what does all of this mean, if anything?
Well, some are relieved to know that the media is not ganging up on legal cannabis. Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post have a common owner. That owner is fine with surrogates falsely demonizing cannabis. In the here and now, it gives a simple, sensational, easily understood answer to the complex problem of mass shootings in the U.S. It creates a straw man for the public to hate, along with attacking members of the Democratic Party who are more favorable to cannabis policy reform and restricting gun rights.
However, it does not have to be that way.
Nonetheless, time and public sentiment are with us. It is certain Rupert Murdoch will not be around much longer. His heirs do not seem to have his drive, ambition, and need for control. His empire could fragment not far down the road.
In any case, the voting public in most states supports cannabis legalization, and those numbers are growing exponentially. It is only a matter of time before the war on weed dies, literally and figuratively.
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