MARIJUANA: POT IS NOT HARMLESS AS SOME MAKE IT

I find it ironic that Marie Myung-Ok Lee's argument for legalizing
marijuana appeared in the same newspaper section as an article about
the Amanda Knox murder trial (6-14).

Knox and her co-defendant, boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, are
providing each other's alibis. They claim they spent the night of her
roommate's murder at Sollecito's apartment, smoking pot and making
love. But they can't "remember the events clearly because they had
taken drugs."

Scientific research has shown that even "recreational" marijuana
smoking can cause memory loss, lethargy, depression and impairment of
judgment and self-perception. This lack of judgment allows marijuana
users to be easily induced into more risky behaviors, such as
unprotected sex, abuse of more dangerous drugs or increasingly
excessive use of marijuana.

Chronic marijuana use can, in turn, lead to paranoia, impotence and
lung damage, and it can permanently impair one's learning ability.

Few of us want to criminalize the medical use of marijuana by a dying
person suffering chronic pain. At the same time, we must acknowledge
that those patients are using a narcotic as a narcotic, the same way
they might use morphine. We don't allow morphine to be sold on the
open market. So why should we commercialize marijuana?

Finally, the idea that government could "control" legalized marijuana
is ludicrous. The government can't control alcohol. Alcohol abuse and
drunk driving cost our society billions of dollars a year in crime,
property damage and medical costs. We don't need to add pot to the mix.

BETH WOODBURY HART; Puyallup