In time for New Year's Eve, a big lie on a big Colorado billboard: "A Coloradan is killed every three days in a marijuana-related traffic crash," it shouts.
Republican-dominated Weld County has deployed this demonstrable falsehood and other reefer-maddening roadside claims in a taxpayer-funded anti-pot campaign.
It's just one more lie in a year where Republican falsehoods flew so fast they congealed in the air like a ladder of lard.
What is it about Republicans and truth these days? They have become blood rivals.
The head of the spear in the GOP offensive against truth is liar-in-chief Donald Trump.
Indicative of this was a recent New York Times profile about a website often touted by Trump that, as a vessel for nothing but alt-right bilge and fabrication, was banned from Facebook and Twitter.
Guilty as charged? Hell, yes. Indeed, pleading his case in hopes of getting back before the eyes of the scrolling multitudes via social media, the site's proprietor said he'd change.
Is that even possible among conservatives anymore? Can they do truth? Don't think so.
The New York Times reported on phony websites linked to the Trump re-election campaign aimed to "exploit fissures in Democratic ranks," like one labeled "Biden2020," which "hews closer to the information spread by Russian bots in 2016 than typical political messaging."
What? Can't the party of Trump come up with its own lies? Surely we don't need to outsource those as well.
An aside here: The Republican Party long has been good at truth-twisting. (Exhibit A: tax cuts that "pay for themselves!") I observed years ago that Republicans were just like the business shouting from its storefront "Going Out of Business Sale" from January to December.
I have to give yesterday's Republicans at least some credit for decorum. They were more interested in receipts than anything verging on veracity, but they kept their storefront swept. Today's Republicans? Picture the guy outside the storefront accusing the fire hydrant of not speaking English. That's them.
Today's GOP orthodoxy is whatever comes out of Trump's melon, and that's mostly lard, er, lies.
Every time Trump opens his mouth before a hive of redcaps it's a national disgrace. His recent rant about wind turbines was a steady stream of bogus-ity from one who doesn't know what he's talking about for the benefit of those who don't want to know.
For one instance, Trump wanted his audience to believe that wind turbines are polluters, their manufacture resulting in "tremendous" emission of "fumes and everything."
Um, yeah. Except for their manufacture, wind turbines are virtually carbon-neutral.
And since when did Donald Trump care at all about carbon loading? He doesn't. He's interested in is posturing himself for the coal and petro-chemical industries.
If you call yourself a thoughtful conservative, you might consider forming another party. Today's Republican Party is not conservative but conserva-myth.
Back to those Republican-promoted billboards about the supposed highway carnage caused by marijuana in Colorado. My wife and I both guffawed. Imagine how the target audience – teens – sees them.
As the Denver Post reports, the claim is based on just one more debunked study. At its root is the fact that marijuana stays in the blood stream a long time, so it's not that unusual to find traces in a host of people in Colorado at any time, and therefore in a host of traffic fatalities.
But, of course, truth doesn't matter at all to today's Republican Party. To a lot of people, like the youths looking at those ridiculous billboards, the whole conserva-myth movement has just become a joke from January to December.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
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