Lt. Gov. Timothy Murray joined the list of opponents of a ballot question that would legalize medical marijuana in Massachusetts, calling the proposal "dangerously overbroad" and fraught with potential for abuse.

If dispensaries open around the state to distribute marijuana to patients who qualify to receive it, it will have devastating financial and public safety impacts on local communities that will be left to guard against abuses, Murray said in an interview with the News Service on Thursday.

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To the Editor:

I felt the need to write this in response to your commentary ("Increasingly, Drugs Are Stealing Our Kids, Reporter, Sept. 18). I am a parent whose child is a drug addict. Just to write or say these words causes physical and emotional pain. We have been dealing with this issue (drug addiction) for a couple of years and if I had the answer to this problem I would have solved it long ago.

Unless you are going through it with a loved one you have no idea the complicated disease of addiction. I wrote a letter to the Reporter about a year ago reaching out to the community and police department to take an aggressive approach to get these kids off the street. Sometimes the only way to try to get help is for the person to be put into the legal system, where they are forced to deal with their issues. One of the things that I have heard over and over again is that we as parents didn't "cause it," we can't "control it" and we can't "cure" it. If we could only live by these words and accept it, but as a parent it is very difficult.

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