DOPEY POSITION

I have followed Ralph Reiland's comments on marijuana and his
rebuttals to those who respond to them with interest.

It is always somewhat confounding when members of academia go out of
their way to pooh-pooh laws that pertain to controlled substances,
more so when they whine and moan about people being incarcerated for
violating those laws. Why anyone who has the credentials to stand in
front of a classroom would want to promote anarchy is beyond my
capacity to fathom.

Indeed, it isn't just an occasional academician promoting such
nonsense. Gary Johnson, the Republican governor of New Mexico, makes
nationwide speeches calling for the legalization of marijuana,
calling its use a "victimless crime."

Is it? Marijuana's advocates are fond of babbling that the worse
thing that happens when you smoke too many joints is that you go to
sleep. Yep. That's what the railroad engineer did in Maryland some
years ago. He climbed into the cab of an engine after smoking too
many joints, missed a switching signal, plowed into another train and
was responsible for 16 people being killed. A victimless crime, was
it?

Long-term medical studies have proven beyond any shadow of a doubt
the deleterious effects of smoking dope, whatever its name. It is the
brain-scrambled and starry-eyed visionaries in our midst who either
don't believe such documentation, or else they are too far gone (for
whatever reason) to understand it.

At some point, common sense is going to have to kick in, but it is
obviously a commodity in very short supply among those whom we have
every right to expect to know better - be they professors, elected
officials or anyone else whose brains have not completely
malfunctioned.

Ross A. Matlack Jr.
Pittsburgh