A BUNCH OF POTHEADS

If Russell Barth (Dec. 16 letter) hadn't noticed, in the last half
century, all the wrongs he cited that should have been righted, have
been righted. And as well they should have been.

But to say a bunch of potheads have been wronged because they can't
legally get high? That's stretching it.

I have to laugh at the many ways such people try to transform their
bad habits into nobility. What I am more inclined to be worried about
is the reason these people need to get high in the first place. Solve
that. Legalizing it is like placing a single Band-Aid on a large open
wound.

You are right in that marijauna does have some real world uses and
they are already legal today. For a while now, legal growth of the
plant has been allowed for hemp or for medicinal purposes.

But to suggest that growing it and getting high are your rights is
just ludicrous.

We have enough problems with our young people starting to smoke
cigarettes and abusing alcohol, and you want to introduce another such
legal vice? That's not to mention that the smoke from marijauna is as
harmful to you as that of cigarettes, and you expect at a time that
cigarette smokers are slowly inching toward their final puff that we
should simply legalize another drug similarly dangerous to one's health?

The bottom line is that drugs are a danger to us all -- directly or
indirectly.

But most of all to suggest that just because I don't think you should
be able to get high that I am a bigot is indefensible. I have friends
that choose to use marijuana -- I don't judge them based upon one
small part of their being. I don't understand how believing that one
is bound by the laws of our society and that these laws are there for
good reason makes one a bigot.

Change isn't always for the better.

Ed Hicks

Chatham

(It's odd that while tobacco is demonized, our federal government is
thinking about decriminalizing marijuana)