MARIJUANA FAR LESS HARMFUL THAN PRESCRIPTION DRUGS, TOBACCO

Senate Bill 74 versus a public opinion of 138,000 yes votes for marijuana.

All those votes, despite the incredibly cold wind and snow that was blowing
Election Day, kept a lot of medicinal users at home because at least they
have half a brain to not get stoned for their pain and then go driving to
the polls. Unlike all of the pill-popping patients of the pill-happy
doctors that thrive across Southcentral Alaska who drive to work stoned,
drive to pick up their kids from school stoned, drive to court stoned, and
so on.

All of it makes me want to play Tom Petty's, "Don't come around here no
more," into Gov. Murkowski's voicemail.

To claim marijuana has addictive qualities similar to heroin is a pretty
disreputable statement, considering the massive studies complied over the
years concerning the addictive qualities of just the legal drug nicotine.
The U.S. Surgeon General, the Royal Society of Canada, and, most recently,
the Royal College of Physicians in the U.K. have concluded nicotine is more
addictive that heroin.

Just like heroin and morphine, nicotine stimulates the human brain's
prodution of chemicals called opiods. It also increases the dopamine levels
in the brain, similar to that of pure methamphetamine. In fact, researchers
in neuroscience at the University of Michigan have found a 20 to 30 percent
alteration in these chemical flows when compared to that of nonsmokers.

In contradiction, marijuana has been found for years to be so safe that no
confirmed deaths have ever been caused by marijuana alone. That's what
worries these politicians I think. The theraputic implications of marijuana
are so endless that accepting it socially amongst the general public
through legalization would wreak havoc on the pharmaceutical industry.

First there came the agricultural revolution, then came the industrial
revolution, and next the worst one of all which is consuming Americans
daily, the pharmaceutical revolution. Maybe Murkowski is a big player in
this and the cash is keeping his shoes shined and his teeth white. Who knows?

When only 5 to 10 percent of people who try smoking marijuana will become
daily users when compared to 80 to 90 percent of cigarette smokers, I stop
and wonder if Murkowski knows what a statistical graph even is.

Dustin Billings

Kenai