Reformer of the Month: Lea Cox Fights Drug Use by Children

Reformer of the Month

We never hear about the courageous reformers in Massachusetts who stand against the entrenched establishment and demand change. That’s because the establishment media do not want us to know about them. Whereas, our difficulty at Massachusetts News is the multitude of people from whom to pick. We could write a book.

"Kids need to know once you make a decision to use an illegal drug, it might be the least decision you make," said activist Lea Cox

Lea Cox Fights Drug Use by Children

By Susan Greenleaf
June 2001

Lea Cox has found her mission in life in fighting drugs among children.

The former naval officer, music teacher and dedicated grandmother of four speaks passionately about her commitment to tell the truth about marijuana and other illegal drugs.

"Kids are still being told that it is harmless and it's not!" she exclaims.

She's fighting George Soros, the multi-billionaire from California who spent $1.6 million in Massachusetts last year to get a "yes" vote on ballot question 8 and failed.

"The ordinary person has no clue how dangerous it is." Cox said. "If you had a ton of money and you smoked something and you liked doing it, wouldn't you like to see it legal so you don't have to look over your shoulder?"

As of January 19, 2001, there are 15,000 research papers available in the marijuana bibliography at the University of Mississippi and none give it a clean bill of health, she tells Mass News.

"We have a drug fair every September and a lot of kids from the colleges nearby argue with me and say there are more problems with alcohol and tobacco. I say, 'That's right, because they're legal, available and acceptable! If you move anything else in this category, you're going to have triple the problems you now have.'"

Cox said the information she has is not common knowledge and it's hard to get it out to the public. She runs the organization, Concerned Citizens for Drug Prevention, from her home. She and her colleagues work on a volunteer basis. Her dining room table looks like "mission control" with stacks of the latest reports, research papers and newspaper articles that she is continually gathering and distributing for parents, groups or congressmen who need current, factual, updated information.

She recently mailed a four-and-a-half-pound package of information to Maine because they're trying to do a pot rally in a small town up there similar to the one they do every September on the Boston Common. She has pictures of kids on the Common openly smoking pot. Mass Cann sponsors the rally every year and up to 57,000 attend. She said under the guise of freedom of speech they get on stage and say, "Toke! Light up! Get high!" They encourage the kids to break the law. "You can smell marijuana everywhere you go on the Common, there's wall-to-wall kids smoking and they take over the whole parade ground and the Upper Common."

She believes the situation is as bad, if not worse, than it was in the sixties and the eighties because we don't have a parent movement anymore. She explains that the marijuana smokers of the sixties whose kids are now growing up say, "I smoked it, it didn't hurt me!" She explained that the marijuana in the sixties had a low THC potency of .02 percent compared to the ten to thirty-three percent of today's marijuana. THC is the hallucinogenic part of it.

"But even at that, people were getting stoned in those days!" she continues. "So you can imagine how much more potent it is now! And parents don't know that."

Cox believes that many wish to legalize all drugs. She is a Massachusetts delegate for Drug Watch International and she networks on a global level. She believes many of the people who are pushing the drugs here are also pushing the drugs overseas. She once walked through an abandoned railroad station in Switzerland, "Letten Station," now closed down. It was an open drug scene where kids were allowed to openly shoot-up. "I have pictures of kids shooting-up in the eye, another shooting in the neck. It wasn't legal, but it was allowed to exist," she said.

The 'Needle Exchange program' is another battle CCDP has been fighting, together with other groups in Massachusetts. It was over-whelmingly defeated in some of the major cities such as Worcester, Springfield and New Bedford. "We beat it more than two-to-one in spite of the propaganda," said Cox. "In the past, our opponents said ridiculous things about us like we're murderers because we didn't want to give needles to the addict. Do you help an alcoholic by making it easier to get alcohol? If anyone thinks about it, if you want to save society and the addict you don't give him needles, you get him off the drug."

Cox said the legalizers are working on many angles. It's the pro-drug lobby that is promoting the "marijuana cigarettes for medicine" ruse. "These groups are powerful and they know if they can call it a medicine they'll have a free ride," she said.

Currently the group is keeping an eye on a pending court case regarding the advertising of marijuana on the MBTA.

"I feel so sorry for kids today. Now they're glamorizing marijuana on all these comedy shows, laughing about it and it's not a laughing matter. Kids need to know once you make a decision to use an illegal drug, it might be the last decision you make because then the drug is in control of you," Cox concluded sadly.