Photo courtesy Mason Tvert

Mason Tvert and an anti-Cindy McCain display.

A Denver-based grassroots organization originally founded in Boulder initiated an internet ad campaign Tuesday decrying Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, as a "drug dealer."

Safer Alternative For Enjoyable Recreation (SAFER), the marijuana legalization organization behind the campaign, bases its argument on McCain's ownership of stock in the Anheuser-Busch distributorship, according to Mason Tvert, Executive Director of SAFER Colorado.

"Obviously, Cindy McCain is someone who has been in the news a lot lately and she is actually the head of one of the largest alcohol distributorships in the entire country," said Tvert.

"If a potential First Lady can sell millions of dollars worth of alcohol and make it into the White House, it seems hypocritical to take anyone that might sell even a couple of hundred dollars worth of marijuana and send them to the Big House."

Tvert told the Colorado Daily that the McCain ad campaign gives his organization an opportunity to illustrate the risks associated with recreational alcohol use versus those with recreational marijuana use.

"We've always taken every opportunity to highlight the fact that marijuana is safer than alcohol, and point out the hypocrisy in laws that allow people to not only use alcohol but even distribute mass quantities of it for profit without any fear of legal repercussion when those adults who simply choose to use marijuana face criminalization and very serious penalties," he said.

Based on this stance, Tvert stressed that the ad campaign was not a personal attack on McCain -- stating "It's not about party politics, it's about partying politics."

SAFER was originally established in Boulder in response to student alcohol-overdose deaths in January of 2005. It campaigned to make the university's penalties for marijuana violations not be more severe than alcohol penalties. It has gone on to establish ballot initiatives legalizing marijuana possession of one ounce or less in Denver in 2005 and making marijuana Denver's "lowest law-enforcement priority" in 2007.

The most recent campaign, featuring a picture of McCain on a poster captioned "Wanted: For Dealing a Drug More Harmful Than Marijuana," is designed to emphasize the zero overdose rate, zero contribution to violent crime, and lower toxicity and addiction rate of marijuana use as opposed to alcohol use, according to Tvert.

Opposition to the SAFER campaign claims the sweeping generalizations diminish the organization's credibility on the main issue.

"It's just silly," said Amy Oliver, host of The Amy Oliver Show on 1310 KFKA-AM and self-described free-market conservative. "Cindy McCain is not a drug dealer, she owns stock in a beer manufacturing company.""The sad thing is, (SAFER) has some legitimate arguments, but they are discredited with over-the-top stuff like 'Cindy McCain is a drug dealer.' That would essentially make every single liquor-store owner, every bar owner and every single restaurant that pours a glass of wine a drug dealer too," added Oliver.

In addition to criminalizing business owners when applying reasoning for the McCain campaign to the general population, Oliver added that, by the same logic, most Americans are "drug dealers."

"I am a drug dealer," she said. "I offer alcohol to my friends when they come over to visit. I guess that would make me a drug pusher. You've just turned the majority of the adult population into drug dealers, but at least we're in good company -- there's a whole bunch of us."

Contact Lance Vaillancourt about this story at (303) 443-6272 ext. 125, or at vaillancourt@coloradodaily.com.