BAN MAKES POT MORE ENTICING

Responding to Paul Jenkins' column "Dope vote: No time for political
cowards" (Sept. 15): He asks where are all "our elected officials and other
opinion leaders"? He intimates these are cowards who are "slinking" around.
Maybe, Mr. Jenkins, they have answered the question, "What good has come of
our present drug laws?"

I've been on this planet more than 71 years. I have learned one thing about
human nature. "Tell me I can't do it! Oh, yeah?!" Fifty years ago, when I
started raising children, if we wanted the kids to go outside and quit
pestering us we would say something like, "I don't want you to go outside
and play today!" We called it "reverse psychology." Grandma didn't have a
word for it, she just knew it worked. Kids went outside, and we went on
with our kaffe klatch or quilting bee.

If we legalize marijuana, there will be an upsurge in use for a while. That
will settle down and it will then become a "societal" thing. Society
(peers) will look down on users and that has through time been the most
effective means of imposing morals. As long as you allow petty tyrants to
try to tell people, through laws, how they must live, you had just better
be building more and more prisons! You can't legislate morals, and you can
only legislate against some actions! You have human nature to contend with.

- -- Dorothy Attwood

Wasilla