Editor:
Last week I was set to compliment the City Council for its sensible conclusion that a moratorium on marijuana dispensaries in Sweet Home was to be enacted. I don’t know if I misread the paper or a wind of change occurred, but with today’s The New Era I find that these otherwise sensible people are out of their ever-lovin’ minds!
Here we spend millions to re-educate a populace concerning the ills of using tobacco and drugs, and then blithely participate in the process to make the carcinogenic, mind-impairing drug marijuana legal for the populace to enjoy.
Is anyone fooled by the term “medical?” If so, I have a mantra for you to recite in your meditative chant: “Oh wa ta foo lie am.” Start slowly; increase the meter with each repetition and true enlightenment will be yours. That is, provided you didn’t make yourself stupid by smoking a “medical joint” first.
If this were a medical initiative, why isn’t it dispensed with a prescription as are other medicines used to treat people?
Why are we ignoring research by the NIDA, a department of the U.S. DHHS’ National Institutes of Health, which reports Cannabis sativa is “psychoactive (mind-altering),” that it “over-activates the endocannabinoid system, causing … effects [that] include altered perceptions and mood, impaired coordination, difficulty with thinking and problem solving, and disrupted learning and memory [that it] affects brain development.”
Further, that “marijuana smoke is an irritant to the lungs, and frequent marijuana smokers can have many of the same respiratory problems experienced by tobacco smokers, such as daily cough and phlegm production, more frequent acute chest illness, and a heightened risk of lung infections.”
By all means ignore studies reported by the American Cancer Society that show marijuana users have a “4.8-fold increase in the risk of heart attack after the first hour of smoking the drug,” that studies link its “chronic use and mental illness” and that its use can cause “a temporary psychotic reaction (involving hallucinations and paranoia).”
A medicine that alters perception and judgment should be dispensed like other drugs – by a licensed physician who can review prescription renewal with the benefits of using a drug, and through a pharmacist trained to dispense what the physician approved.
A plant with questionable quantitative medicinal value which, when ingested, makes people stupid, should be outlawed. Oh yeah, that’s right, it is!
If our drug problems in Sweet Home were not bad enough, our City Council has just contributed to making them worse – a sad day for our community, indeed.
Richard Rowley
Sweet Home