READER RESPONSES TO LAST WEEK'S 'WEED AND GREED' ARTICLE

In a recent article drug task force officer Chuck Hearn said that
marijuana is kind of a gateway drug and he believed marijuana leads
to other destructive substances.

He said that many of the hard drug addicts he encounters, such as
cocaine users, started smoking marijuana in their early teens.

I bet if we were to ask those same people did they smoke cigarettes
or drink alcohol before they started doing hard drugs like cocaine
they would say yes.

The gateway theory is just a "theory." I read a book entitled "Mother
of All Gateway Drugs" by John Newmeyer, Ph.D. in which he states: "if
we really want to look at what is the mother of all gateway drugs,
its sugar. Did you ever give a baby a drink of soda or some ice
cream? You can hardly pry it out of their hands."

We're going to have to come up with something better than the
"gateway theory" for us to have a reason to be arresting someone
every forty seconds.

Dawn Palmer