Big Marijuana Inc. has saturated our state with $1.5 billion in sales last year alone, and State Representative La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago) hopes to further expand the drug culture in Illinois. State Representatives Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-Peoria), Jonathan Carroll (D-Northbrook), Anne Stava-Murray (D-Downers Grove) and Kevin John Olickal (D-Chicago) are co-sponsors of this terrible proposal.

La Shawn Ford is the chief sponsor of HB 1, which sets the stage for more drugs on the streets and in our communities. The bill creates the “Compassionate Use and Research of Entheogens Act” for the purpose of legalizing psilocybin, among other hallucinogenic drugs, which is the psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms — a Schedule 1 drug.

As a way to justify legalization, in Ford’s eyes, HB 1 starts out with everything we’ve done wrong trying to keep drugs off the streets and out of our communities through criminalization. According to the text, we’ve spent too much money, circulated too much misinformation, made drug use less safe, (say what?) and attached unnecessary stigmas – all contributing to the increase of drug use, in his limited opinion. So, Ford’s solution is to remove restrictions and legalize everything. This at a time when drug overdose deaths have reached record levels.

The “harm reduction tools,” which Ford wants in facilities that offer “psilocybin services,” include drug-checking kits, scales, and capsules and would allow “users to make safe and more accurate, evidence-based decisions about their personal use of these substances.” What user wouldn’t like to get these “tools” from the State to make using illegal substances easier? Common sense tells us that these so-called “tools” would inevitably increase drug use, and at taxpayer expense.

HB 1 lays out the groundwork for “psilocybin services” taking place in “administration sessions” for “clients” which is a fancy way of saying they will provide facilities where 18-yr-olds can hallucinate with a paid Dept. of Public Health licensed “facilitator” present.

To make the case that psychedelics are safe for the purpose of legalization, HB 1 relies on sketchy research to support the use of psychedelic compounds to treat mental health and other disorders such as anxiety, depression, suicidal thoughts, PTSD, and headaches. And there you have it. This is right out of the “medical marijuana” handbook, which was right out of “Big Tobacco.”

‘It’s safe because it has medicinal properties because we say it does. Therefore, it should be legal.’ That’s how they think. They’ll license, regulate, and make available these psychedelics to anyone 18 and older. This is very serious.

But they’ve gotten ahead of themselves, because a few pages into the bill, you’ll find that a person does not have to have any medical or mental condition in order to engage in “psilocybin services.”

And it’s not just psilocybin that they want to decriminalize and legalize. The bill also mentions dimethyltryptamine, ibogaine, and mescaline – all entheogens/hallucinogens/psychedelics.

Let’s take a look at what an entheogen is and what it’s used for:

From Wikipedia: “Entheogens are psychoactive substances that induce alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition, or behavior for the purposes of engendering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. Anthropological study has established that entheogens are used for religious, magical, shamanic, or spiritual purposes in many parts of the world.”

From the Encyclopedia of Human Behavior (Second Edition) 2012, “Among psychologists of religion, entheogen has become the preferred term for chemicals such as psilocybin that are psychoactive drugs that have profound effects on consciousness.”

In Neuropathology of Drug Addictions and Substance Misuse, 2016 entheogens are described as “psychoactive substances known to induce profound changes in perception, including changes in the experience of time or space, as well as alterations in moods, thoughts, and other mental states.”

Mark A. Hoffman in Toxicology in Antiquity (second Addition) 2019, states in his abstract: “The Mystery Religions of the ancient world frequently, if not always, employed the use of psychoactive drugs or entheogens to induce altered states of consciousness.” (emphasis added)

Entheogens are psychedelics most often used in spiritual rituals. This raises an important question:

If Entheogens are used frequently in religious and spiritual rituals* and HB 1 establishes locations in which DPH licensed facilitators will be skilled in “heightened transference in expanded states of consciousness,” is State Representative La Shawn Ford planning to open state-sponsored New Age Eastern Mysticism religious facilities?

The bill goes on to say that on or before July 31, 2024, the Department of Public Health shall publish “medical, psychological, and scientific studies, research, and other information relating to the safety and efficacy of psilocybin and other entheogens in treating mental health conditions, including, but not limited to, addiction, depression, anxiety disorders, headache disorders, and end-of-life psychological distress.”

We’re not holding our breath.

This is wrong on so many fronts. How can allowing mind-altering drugs to be easily made available ever be a good thing? Shame on lawmakers whose job it is to protect its citizenry and do what’s best to help families flourish!

Moreover, what message are they sending to the children and families of Illinois? Say “yes” to drugs? Say “yes” to addiction and a life of mediocrity? That’s the message we are hearing.

TAKE ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state lawmakers. Urge them to reject all bills that decriminalize and legalize any additional Schedule 1 Drugs. Tell them families are suffering enough already as a result of the foolish legalization of marijuana and the lax or non-enforcement of other highly addictive drugs. Tell your lawmakers that it’s his/her job to pass laws that strengthen families, not tear them down.

*Scripture is clear that when we disobey God’s plan for His creation, we open the door to demonic activity. It’s much better NOT to open that door. God always knows what’s best for us.

“…if you refuse to do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires you, but you must master it.” Genesis 4:7

“…you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin leading to death, or to obedience leading to righteousness.” Romans 6:16

“Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its desires.” Romans 6:12

PLEASE NOTE: This article is dripping with satire
to highlight the foolishness of this legislative proposal.

At long last, the Illinois General Assembly is doing something that will better the lives of Illinoisans. It took 102 sessions to accomplish this wondrous feat, but they finally have proven their worth with HB 4040.

Introduced by the brilliantly brave State Representative La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago), HB 4040 would criminalize any discipline, correction or action perceived as “persecution” by a parent toward their minor child–aka, “bullying.” If passed, this law would give a minor child the legal ability to sue their parents for the emotional damage caused by a word or look.

Representative Ford is giving children the opportunity he never had: the chance to make their parents pay for all the trivial groundings, dad jokes, displays of affection in front of peers, and scoldings for unmown grass. You get the picture. These traumatizing experiences can finally earn them something just in case the damage their parents have inflicted keeps them from being able to function in the workplace.

Children across the state are eagerly petitioning their state lawmaker to support HB 4040 in unprecedented numbers. Cyrus, an Illinois minor and a victim of serial parental corrections, became emotional after hearing the proposal:

“My parents are always browbeating me to brush my teeth; “do it or you’ll get cavities!” they say. But now with HB 4040, they’ll be paying much more than a dentist’s bill.”

Some individuals–mainly parents–are concerned that minors will be abusing this power and wielding it with a petty fist, but this is not the case at all. Misanthropic Macaroon (zey/zed), a bold and beautiful trans lesbian minor, sees nothing but justice and healing coming in the wake of HB 4040:

“This bill is crucial to trans rights. It’ll finally provide justice for kids like me, whose parents refused to let me take hormones at 13. I knew I was a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and they made my life hell by not believing me. I need them to pay for the irreparable damage they caused to my mental health, and now with HB 4040 possibly becoming law, I’ll have the ability to balance out the scales of justice and make their lives hell.”

Macaroon also pointed out that if such life-changing decisions like transitioning to the opposite sex can be made by minors, decisions to prosecute parents can be safely trusted in children’s very capable, albeit inexperienced, hands.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state lawmaker to let them know what you think about HB 4040. You can also call your state representative’s office via the Capitol switchboard, which can be reached at (217) 782-2000.

State Senator Kimberly Lightford (D-Chicago) has been diligently working to expand the state’s compulsory school attendance laws. In February 2019, she introduced a bill to lower the mandatory age for school attendance in Illinois from 6 to 5 years of age.  This proposal passed the Illinois Senate on April 11, 2019 by a vote of 39 to 16.

Despite the COVID-19 lockdown, Illinois House members are headed to Springfield for a Lame Duck session. State Senator Lightford’s bill, SB 2075, is scheduled to be heard in the Higher Education Committee in Springfield on Saturday, January 9th at 10:00 AM. Illinois House sponsors include State Representatives Kambium Buckner (D-Chicago), Curtis Tarver (D-Chicago) and La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago).

There is no reason for the government to usurp the God-given authority of parents to direct the upbringing of their children. Parents are best suited to decide when their children are socially, emotionally, and cognitively ready for formal education.

State lawmakers are not going to fix what’s wrong with education by forcing kids to start school a year earlier. In fact, there is evidence that education isn’t about more seat-time for kids.

Moreover, we all need to realize that there isn’t much education going on in many of our government schools.

The decision to begin formal education–which increasingly serves the political and moral ends of liberals and their allies in the Teacher’s Union–rests with parents, not State Senator Lightford or any other politician.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send an email or a fax to your state representative to ask him/her to vote against SB 2075 and the expanding role of government in the lives of Illinois families. You can also call your state senator through the Springfield switchboard at (217) 782-2000.

MORE ACTION:  File a Witness Slip:  Click HERE

Register on the left column.

Once you have verified your registration, you can file a witness slip on any bill.

Return to the Higher Education Committee Hearing Details.

Scroll down to find SB 2075 and click on the paper and pencil icon at the far right to “Create Witness Slip.”

Make sure you click OPPONENT for this over-reaching bill.

You may type “None” for Firm/Business/Agency and Title and “Self” for Representation.

Under Testimony, click “Record of Appearance Only.”

If required, check the Terms of Agreement.

Click Create Slip.

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The 1619 Project has been controversial since its publication by the New York Times a year ago. While many on the left have praised it, with Oprah Winfrey even announcing plans to adapt the project into a television series, historians and those on the right have noted errors and call the collection of essays and poems revisionist history. Now, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) has proposed a bill seeking to ban public schools from teaching it as part of their curriculum.

While the project acknowledges the founding of the United States as taking place in 1776, it seeks “to reframe American history by considering what it would mean to regard 1619 as our nation’s birth year.” That year is important because it marks the arrival and enslavement of the first known Africans in the North American colony of Virginia. The project further determines that the American Revolution occurred because the original 13 colonies understood Britain would soon outlaw slavery, thus making war the only pathway to preserving the foul institution on this side of the Atlantic.

When the project was rolled out by the Times, it included K-12 curriculum for schools. The curriculum is being used in several major school districts in cities, including Chicago, across the country. Cotton’s bill would prohibit school districts from using federal funds to teach the project.

On July 30, Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, “The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable. I reject that root and branch.” Cotton’s bill is called the “Saving American History Act of 2020.”

The bill calls the 1619 Project “an activist movement” that is “gaining momentum to deny or obfuscate this history by claiming that America was not founded on the ideals of the Declaration [of Independence] but rather on slavery and oppression.” It notes that “this distortion of American history is being taught to children in public school classrooms” through curriculum based on the 1619 Project, which “claims ‘nearly everything that has truly made America exceptional’ grew ‘out of slavery.’”

It further states, “The 1619 Project is a racially divisive and revisionist account of history that threatens the integrity of the Union by denying the true principles on which it was founded.”

Of course, Cotton is meeting fierce opposition. The 1619 Project has been so well received by the mainstream media that in the spring of this year, Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist responsible for the project, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Jordan Cohen, a spokesperson for the Times, said the project “is based in part on decades of recent scholarship by leading historians of early America that has profoundly expanded our sense of the colonial and Revolutionary period. Much of this scholarship has focused on the central role that slavery played in the nation’s founding.”

The same day Cotton’s bill was introduced, July 27, Hannah-Jones joined a Twitter conversation regarding whether the 1619 Project was about history or memory. She tweeted, “The fight here is about who gets to control the national narrative, and therefore, the nation’s shared memory of itself. One group has monopolized this for too long in order to create this myth of exceptionalism. If their version is true, what do they have to fear of 1619?”

She continued in the next tweet, “I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not a history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge the national narrative and, therefore, the national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it has the past.”

Considering her statements, one wonders how can the 1619 Project be taught as history in public schools.

Even Hannah-Jones tweets later in the thread, “Further, the curriculum is supplementary and cannot and was never intended to supplant U.S. history curriculum (which is pretty terrible but none of these folks seem concerned about that.) Teachers have used it in English, social studies, art, foods classes.” However, reports are the curriculum is being taught as history. Protestors are proclaiming it as history in the streets.

The Illinois Angle

The 1619 Project and Cotton’s bill appear to have had an effect on Illinois State Representative La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago). As you may know, Ford recently called on the Illinois State Board of Education to remove all history books in Illinois schools, and for schools to stop teaching history until new curriculum can be developed. He said current history books and curriculum “unfairly” communicate history.

Ford said, as reported by WGN, “We’re concerned that current school history teachings lead to white privilege and a racist society.”

A few days prior, Ford told Politico’s Illinois Playbook, “What’s being taught is inaccurate,” saying blacks were only depicted as slaves and that other minorities, including women and people of Jewish heritage, were also portrayed unfairly.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your federal lawmakers and urge them to support the Saving American History Act of 2020, a bill that would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the divisive 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts.

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