BACK PROP. 203? ARE WE ALL CRAZY?

John Sperling's continued funding of efforts to legalize drugs in Arizona
now reaches ever further in yet another crusade (with fellow wealthy gadfly
partners George Soros and Peter Lewis) to not only decriminalize possession
of marijuana and other drugs but to also have our Department of Public
Safety hand it out free to users in 2 ounce baggies.

I can't begin to relate the repugnance I feel for the low-life pushers that
patrol our schools to approach, befriend and ultimately infect our children
with these poisons as they walk through our neighborhoods.

Studies show that a vast majority of our school-age children have knowledge
of where to buy marijuana, and most have tried it.

And now, Mr. Sperling wants to give this entire, illicit, dirty, poisonous
underground industry a partner in our state cops.

Are we all crazy? The polls show that this measure is going to pass. Ballot
Proposition 203, the Drug Medicalization, Prevention, and Control Act of
2002 is well named, sort of.

It will "medicate" nobody (marijuana is still illegal under federal law),
it will "prevent" law enforcement from putting the bad guys away even as
they are forced to become the pushers' patsies, and it will "control" drugs
by injecting more of them into the blood streams of our kids.

I suppose this is one way to deal with poison. Legalize it. The
protagonists, playing on your sympathy for the ill, have a cowardly, hidden
agenda that needs your attention and disdain.

If I had as much money as these guys, I'd at least get a wing named after
me at a drug treatment center somewhere.

One of the reasons I hear most often to support Proposition 202 on Indian
gaming is that gambling is not a good thing, so it should be restricted to
the reservations.

And, after all, the Indian nations got a bad deal and this is, more or
less, a payback. So, therefore, 202 is OK.

If these are the parameters to dole out largesse and assuage guilt, we only
have to determine who gets legalized drugs and prostitution to solve two
more problems.

Tempe Union governing board candidate Mary Lou Taylor has been a teacher
for 38 years.

Taylor now wants to teach a few things at the board level, such as making
an all out effort to support the classroom teacher, such as supporting site
based councils as the most logical place to allocate school resources, and
(my personal favorite) to hold the school board accountable for policy and
not let it micro-manage the district.

She joins a talented field of challengers for three seats.

Pat Edwards has a difficult task. He is running against an incumbent to get
elected to the Maricopa Community College board. Governing board members
are defeated about as often as a solar eclipse, but Edwards' energy and
drive gives him a shot.

Besides, he's got a novel approach. He wants to bring fiscal discipline and
better financial management to the community college district.

You can contact him for information at ElectPatEdwards.com or call him at
(602) 620-9101.

It's something to think about. In every case I can think of, the people now
calling for "budget reform" at the state level never uttered the words
until we had a budget deficit.

I do not think they mean what they pretend to let us think they mean.