I agree with comrade Peaches assessment (letter 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 anti-social qualities
attributed to marijuana by the often-astute comrade Parrish, the
never-astute 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