Pubdate: Mon, 22 Jun 2009
Source: News Tribune, The (Tacoma, WA)
Copyright: 2009 Tacoma News Inc.
Contact:  http://www.thenewstribune.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/442
Author: Beth Woodbury Hart

MARIJUANA: POT IS NOT HARMLESS AS SOME MAKE IT

I find it ironic that Marie Myung-Ok Lee's argument for legalizing 
marijuana appeared in the same newspaper section as an article about 
the Amanda Knox murder trial (6-14).

Knox and her co-defendant, boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, are 
providing each other's alibis. They claim they spent the night of her 
roommate's murder at Sollecito's apartment, smoking pot and making 
love. But they can't "remember the events clearly because they had 
taken drugs."

Scientific research has shown that even "recreational" marijuana 
smoking can cause memory loss, lethargy, depression and impairment of 
judgment and self-perception. This lack of judgment allows marijuana 
users to be easily induced into more risky behaviors, such as 
unprotected sex, abuse of more dangerous drugs or increasingly 
excessive use of marijuana.

Chronic marijuana use can, in turn, lead to paranoia, impotence and 
lung damage, and it can permanently impair one's learning ability.

Few of us want to criminalize the medical use of marijuana by a dying 
person suffering chronic pain. At the same time, we must acknowledge 
that those patients are using a narcotic as a narcotic, the same way 
they might use morphine. We don't allow morphine to be sold on the 
open market. So why should we commercialize marijuana?

Finally, the idea that government could "control" legalized marijuana 
is ludicrous. The government can't control alcohol. Alcohol abuse and 
drunk driving cost our society billions of dollars a year in crime, 
property damage and medical costs. We don't need to add pot to the mix.

BETH WOODBURY HART; Puyallup
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom