I agree with comrade Peaches assessment (LTE of 10/9) of comrade Parrish's
surprisingly muddleheaded philistinism regarding recreational marijuana use
("Thug Free Zone" 9/11).

Over the last century there were many major studies of marijuana's alleged
cultural/public health impact. None ever concluded marijuana is the demon
the prohibitionists paint it as. Thousands of years of human marijuana
consumption and the preponderance of scientific evidence disproves the
highly negative pharmacological and antisocial qualities attributed to
marijuana by the oftenastute comrade Parrish, the neverastute Czar of all
the Buffoons, Ret. Lt. Gen. Barry McCaffrey, and our state's marijuana
prohibition profiteering Lieutenant Governor, Brad Owen.

There have been thousands of chemical and pharmacological studies on
marijuana and the majority of scientific evidence suggests: marijuana is
less addictive than caffeine (and much less addictive than alcohol and
nicotine), marijuana is not a "gateway" to actually addictive intoxicants
and stimulants, marijuana has no fatal toxicity level for humans,
imprisonment damages people more than marijuana, and even heavy chronic
marijuana consumption does not cause cancer; birth defects; lung, brain or
chromosomal damage; diminished cognition; violent behavior; memory loss;
immunity suppression, etc. Marijuana is a safer recreational intoxicant
than alcohol.

Deran Ludd