LEGAL MARIJUANA MEANS PLENTY MORE PROBLEMS

Today's infants and children are the beneficiaries of the drug and sex
revolution. In many cases their young lives are spent in hell's
kitchen. They can't perform well in school because they can't pay
attention or calm down.

The potheads of the old guard don't know what they don't know. If they
had to review the in-depth studies of the harm of smoking "weed" or
tobacco, they couldn't pay attention long enough to absorb the basic
facts if they wanted to. They simply want to legalize "pot" so they
can continue their addiction by smoking it, not getting arrested and
looking like heroes doing it ("Barney Frank looks to remove another
taboo," Sept. 13).

Addiction and selfishness go hand in hand. No matter how harmful the
substance or behavior, they, the addicted slaves, don't care because
that is the definition of addiction. The suggestion that medical
science has no medication for nausea is a manipulative ploy once again
characteristic of the addicted mind set.

This is not the kind of decision-making children need. They need role
models to help them steer clear of the dangers of "tuning out and turning on."

At a certain stage, over 50 perhaps, one needs to get in the practice
of getting up in the morning to think of others and what you can do to
help them. It isn't about "me, me, me" anymore. As Abraham Maslow
affirmed in his observations of the older adult life stages; there are
the healthy expressions of generativity or the unhealthy impulses of
stagnation.

To survive and thrive, children need the leaders of family and society
expressing generativity. Children do not need selfish, addicted and
stagnating potheads afraid of death running their lives.

I speak of the needs of the children because they are the ones left to
dig out of the dregs the "me generation" has left behind. Don't you
think we should be more focused on their future and leaving them a
healthy society?

Diane Bolton

New Bedford