Hells Angels Members in Canada Are Protesting Legalization of Marijuana-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Canadian Hells Angels members are protesting the legalization of marijuana because they would lose money in illegal drug trafficking.
The Truth:
Hells Angels members in Canada aren’t protesting the legalization of marijuana.
That rumor started with the fake news website World News Daily Report. After newly-elected liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to legalize marijuana during his campaign, the fake news website reports:
OTTAWA | As Canada’s newly elected Liberal government is on the verge of legalizing marijuana, thousands of Hells Angels members have taken the Parliament by storm yesterday to protest the new proposition.
The legalization of marijuana could cost the organized crime hundreds of thousands of jobs, believes the spokesman for the Canadian chapter of the Hells Angels, Jean-Roch Fournier.
“We estimate that Prime minister Justin Trudeau’s radical proposition to legalize marijuana could cost us over a hundred thousand jobs” says the former lawyer. “From growing operations, to trimming, packaging, transportation and selling, this new legislature will threaten the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of Canadian workers” he warns.
The story had been shared on social media sites more than 110,000 times within weeks of being published. Many who read the story missed that World News Daily Report is a fake news website, but its disclaimer reads that it assumes “all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content.