December
22, 2001
San Jose Mercury News
MAKING
Sonya Barna out to be a heroine for her work with California's Campaign
Against Marijuana Planting ( Page 1A, Dec.
17 ) is stretching it a little. She has obviously found
her niche in life. However, the Mercury News article missed
the point of what causes our youth to choose a path of habitual drug
use/abuse.
I lived through the '70s as a young, single man. Surviving my
experience experimenting with marijuana to become a law-abiding, tax-paying
citizen is not at all consistent with Barna's comments warning today's
youth that use of the substance will cause them to slide into aimless
obscurity. It isn't marijuana that causes a malaise in someone's
life.
Show me one death certificate in California listing the cause of death
as related to marijuana consumption. What do you think her credibility
will be with our youth when eventually these children experiment with
marijuana?
I understand that there are people in our society who, due to their
upbringing or religion or morals, cannot imagine that a substance
listed as a dangerous drug be anything but illegal. With laws
against marijuana, one group imposes its will on another.
The real solution is for parents and educators to give their time
and energy to the children from the time they enter school until they
leave high school. Lead by examples of good citizenship so our
children see they have the option to make good decisions about everything
they may encounter. It isn't about drugs.
Donn Ledwick
San Jose
SONYA Barna's ideas about implementing and defending the Compassionate
Use Act are retroactive to the Dan Lungren days in California.
She shows how desperately law enforcement needs to be educated about
medical marijuana and the laws of California.
Barna thinks she's being compassionate by conceding that one plant "won't
hurt anybody'' if someone is dying of cancer. She ignores that
a dying patient has no way of tending a plant that requires habitual
tending, or that some patients may need to consume more marijuana than
just one plant will yield, which is why patients usually have to buy
their cannabis.
Carrying on marijuana eradication programs like CAMP undermines the
availability of medical-grade cannabis, drives up the price of what
is left after raids, terrorizes patients, and wastes precious taxpayers'
dollars. It's time to shift our law-enforcement priorities to
stopping terror, not implementing it.
Ray Carlson
Redwood City
YOUR story on CAMP makes it clear why marijuana should be legal.
If it were legal, people wouldn't be out there in the woods, polluting
and planting. The weed and environment would both be better off.
It's time to legalize all drugs and get them out of the control of ruthless
criminals who might not care about anything but making a buck.
The citizens of this country are getting fed a bunch of polluted drugs
because our country won't take over the job of distribution.
With the taxes from these sales, you could fund prevention and rehabilitation
programs. This system would help the user, rather than just locking
them up, and wasting lives and resources.
Art Mack
Lyons, Ore.
SONYA Barna wouldn't have to worry about 8-year-old children being shot
by pot farmers or streams being polluted by large-scale gardens' use
of chemical fertilizers if the price of marijuana weren't so high and
the profits so lucrative.
Every time you bust a garden, you drive up the price, and increase the
natural motivation to invest in the industry. Risk creates profit.
If everyone could grow their own on their balcony, or in their backyard
( for medicinal use or not ), the price would drop dramatically and
organized crime's involvement would cease. Eight-year-old kids
could shoot deer all they want, and the worst thing that would happen
would be someone watching way too much Comedy Central and eating way
too much toast.
Cops and drug dealers get rich while civil infrastructure goes undeveloped.
Supply and demand have existed for thousands of years; they won't cease
with the current war on drugs. The people have spoken: We want
harm reduction, not war on our own people.
Brandon Wolfe-Hunnicutt
Santa Cruz
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