REASONABLE GOAL OR PURE IDIOCY?

I respond to Deanna Wrenn's Dec. 18 article, "Growing hemp legally on hold
in state," which stated industrial hemp farming is legal under West
Virginia law but nonetheless banned, as the Federal Drug Enforcement
Administration doesn't discriminate between hemp, which is not a drug, and
marijuana, which is.

Officials in West Virginia and other states have sent the DEA letters
asking how they might proceed with cultivation without meaningful reply.
One gets used to the ordinary procession of tax dollars' obituaries, but
the abrupt plunge here is startling. Obscure functionaries in a shadowy
bureaucracy reminiscent of an eastern-bloc intelligence service decide they
needn't bother distinguishing illegal drugs from other matter, impose bans
at whim, and stonewall the puzzled inquiries of several states.

When idiocy of this magnitude can masquerade as virtue on the facile
premise that fighting drugs trumps all competing concerns and constraints
of law, logic or linkage to reality, it is time to consider whether a
"drug-free society" is a reasonable goal or a mirage perpetually chased by
politicians, bureaucrats and gullible voters in mutually reinforcing folly.

The predictable "soft on drugs," "coddling criminals" and "sending the
wrong message to children" triteness will erupt, but the message our
descendants inherit from the present softness on stupidity and coddling of
nitwits may be a gene pool depleted of intellect.

Mett Ausley, M.D.

Lake Waccamaw, N.C.