NO LEGALIZED MARIJUANA

Chelan County has normally been a very conservative area of the state
of Washington , but the current political activities within this state
are now commencing to make themselves more visible here. Read the
headlines in The Wenatchee World. Harriet Bullitt from Leavenworth has
now donated $100,000 to New Approach Washington to legalize marijuana
in the state (Initiative 502). She joins fellow liberal, Progressive
Insurance Chairman Peter Lewis, a primary financial donor to the
Democratic Party for years.

Apparently Initiative 502 is having difficulty obtaining enough
signatures to earn a place on the ballot. Congratulations to Harriet
Bullitt. I am sure the Democrats applaud you. The rest of the
conservatives in this country and this state do not!

I was actually born in the hospital at Leavenworth (my parents lived
in Dryden at the time), but liberals from the Seattle area have
co-opted the entire Leavenworth area, and made it into their own
liberal domain. I have ranches in the Dryden, Cashmere and Entiat
areas. Leavenworth, before the liberals moved in to gain control, was
formerly a very quiet logging and farming area. Not any more.

I did spend 50 years as a teacher and a school counselor at Eastmont,
Cashmere, Peshastin-Dryden and Wenatchee school districts, so I have
directly experienced the negative impact of drugs -- usually beginning
with marijuana and then progressing to stronger drugs. And, yes, I
have seen students at school actually "stoned," and I have had
teachers call me and ask me to remove a "stoned" student from their
class. There was a time at Wenatchee High School when we as counselors
were required to patrol the back parking lot to "break up" the
students who were using drugs on school grounds.

In this state and the nation as a whole, at least some progress is
being made to make smoking less attractive to teenagers and young
adults. The very last thing that we need to promote is the
introduction of smoking again -- and certainly not smoking marijuana
and glamorizing the use of drugs. Please do not sign Initiative 502
and work with me to openly criticize those people who are attempting
to legitimize the use of illegal substances.

Lorraine Kile

Wenatchee