POT SMOKING NOT HARMLESS

Editor, The Record:

I find that I must agree with Larry Bennett on the pot issue.

Why? Because as a former pot-consumer - along with most of my former
pot-consumption peers whom I've bumped into these last half-dozen years - I
can attest to the permanent damage that marijuana can cause to the
consumer's body and mind.

Scientific proof of such potential damage?

For one, there are the startling facts published in an article last Sept. 17
in London's Guardian newspaper. It was authored by professor of psychiatry
at the Institute of Psychiatry and hospital consultant, Robin Murray:

"In the mid '90s, a Dutch psychiatrist named Don Lintzen, from the
University Clinic in Amsterdam, noted that people with schizophrenia who
consumed a lot of cannabis had a much worse outcome than those who didn't.

This was confirmed by other studies, including a four-year follow-up at the
Maudsley Hospital. Those who continued to smoke cannabis were three times
more likely to develop a chronic illness than those who did not consume the
drug," Murray learned.

If pro-pot people propose legalizing marijuana for practical reasons - e.g.,
less pressure on already overburdened law-enforcement and justice systems -
that's a clear and perhaps practical motive, but there's simply way too much
of the media-propagated misinformation out there telling our impressionable
youth that pot is harmless.

Frank G. Sterle, Jr.