Run a Google search on marijuana, marijuana decriminalization, etc. and you will end up with millions of results. You could literally spend the rest of your life reading all the articles and never cover them all. Just know this: not everything you read online about pot is true. Some of it isn’t even close.

For people concerned about the truth, there are two types of posts to worry about: fake news and misleading news. Both can lead you to believe things that are not true, especially if you are the type of person who doesn’t make an effort to dig into the details.

A Fake News Example

Fake news should be easier to spot if you’re paying attention. For example, a recent post published by the Buffalo Chronicle reported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was working on a deal with Amtrak to allow cannabis sales and consumption.

Anyone familiar with fake news and satire would recognize the article’s language for what it was. Unfortunately, far too many people fell for it. Though the story was 100% satire, hundreds of people liked and shared it on social media.

The story took on a life of its own, so much so that Schumer’s office had to issue a formal statement saying it wasn’t true. Sen. Schumer, though actively working on a cannabis reform bill he can bring to the Senate before the end of the year, has no plans to try to attach interstate travel to it. He is certainly not trying to broker a deal between Washington and Amtrak.

A Misleading News Example

Misleading news stories are a bit more difficult to detect. They require readers to actually do their homework. A good example is a recent Forbes article that links synthetic cannabinoids in Utah with hot hemp. Not only was the story misleading, but it was also picked up by dozens of other news outlets that spread it across the internet.

Whether intentionally or out of ignorance, the author of the post conflated hot hemp, which is hemp plant material containing more than the legally allowed 0.3% THC by volume, with the introduction of synthetic cannabinoids to both medical cannabis and CBD. Unfortunately, the two have nothing to do with one another.

The experts at Pure Utah, a medical cannabis dispensary in Payson, explain that the majority of synthetic cannabinoids are derived from legal CBD. CBD is the primary cannabinoids found in legal hemp plants. That being the case, there is neither incentive nor valid reason for hemp growers to produce hot hemp to meet processor demand.

Furthermore, processors are the ones responsible for producing synthetic cannabinoids. The cannabinoids are produced in labs, not grown on hemp farms. If you were to read the Forbes article without knowing this, you would likely be misled on a topic that’s actually very important in Utah.

Don’t Believe Everything You Read

The point here should be obvious: don’t believe everything you read online. Even serious hard news presented by reputable media outlets may not tell the whole truth. No matter how reputable the source, hard news is never truly objective. It is never completely without bias.

In the cannabis world, studies are often selectively utilized to present one viewpoint or another. But studies can be misleading depending on how they are presented. Just because a media outlet presents a study as proof of a particular viewpoint doesn’t make the story accurate.

Not everything you read online about pot is true. Don’t just blindly believe what you read. Check the sources. Research the data for yourself. Otherwise, you might find yourself being misled to your own detriment.