ANSWER TO POT PROBLEM LIES SOMEWHERE BETWEEN EXTREMES

This is in response to Carmen F. Ambrosino's opinion piece of Feb
16th, "Dangerous misinformation on marijuana." As a retiree who has
seen 70 years pass by and never smoked anything, my eyes roll at the
polarization about marijuana (aka cannabis). Cannabis is clearly not
as good as legalizers claim, nor as bad as prohibitionists claim.
While I disagree with some of Ambrosino's stats, I agree that cannabis
is not risk-free. No drug is. The question should be how to manage
that risk.

The histories of tobacco and alcohol in 20th-century America confirm
that an unfettered free market (for tobacco) and national prohibition
(of alcohol) both caused more net societal damage than is being caused
by these drugs today. It was an important lesson. We can minimize the
net societal damage done by cannabis -- and its regulation -- by
neither legalization nor prohibition, but somewhere in between. The
discussion should be to decide where.

John Chase

Palm Harbor, Fla.