TEENS CAN SEE IMPACT OF DRUG USE IN SOCIETY

One must wonder if the author of "Pot amendment deserves a 'no,' " the
News editorial of Oct. 8, has spent any time in a high school recently.

If our teenagers are dumb enough to think that an amendment to treat
marijuana like alcohol means that there is no downside to its use,
then we need to be more worried about education than drug policy.

There are certainly social consequences to the use of both drugs, but
teenagers can look around and see this for themselves.

The piece also suggests that marijuana laws are the only thing keeping
kids off drugs - God forbid they should listen to their parents.

The bullet points in the editorial inexplicably intimate that the
present laws aren't particularly harsh or resource-intensive, which
doesn't seem like much of an argument against striking the laws
entirely. Teenagers are smart enough to understand that the current
laws amount to nothing more than a slap on the wrist, so why
perpetuate hypocrisy?

We should be advocating sensible and consistent laws on substances,
and emphasizing the importance of personal responsibility in our
youth, not quibbling over which chemicals responsible adults are
allowed to ingest.

David Van Duzer

Denver