MARIJUANA EDITORIAL FLAWED

Your Sept. 7 editorial, "Getting high with the senators," typifies the
condescending tone with which opponents to legalizing marijuana substitute
rhetoric for reason.

Characterizing pro-legalization ideas as formed after "sharing a couple of
big bats [sic] of weed" denigrates both ideas and those holding them in one
easy cliche. You sneer: "Too many people breaking the law? Well, then,
scrap the law." Maybe if you were more high-minded you would see something
more profound: "too many people" (it used to be called "a majority")
believe the law is wrong and must be changed. The prohibitionist responds:
Well then, shelve democracy.

Then there are "the kids": favourite shibboleth of the prohibitionist. Of
14 column inches (excluding the callout box misrepresenting your editorial
thrust), seven obsess on this "crucially flawed" element. Also typical
demagoguery: drown out reason with a fear that our kids will become the
greasy stereotypes of anti-drug propaganda.

You state "any suggestion that federal control ... is ... possible is
simple, wilful blindness." Maybe. But if so, how can you suggest efficacy
in keeping the far greater levels of federal control entailed by the status
quo? Are we to infer that you have a simple, wilful blind spot?

I conclude my critique by pointing out that the debate needed to forge
effective drug policy can never occur so long as one side gets public
moneys and free "public service" space -- while the other risks reprisal
for freely speaking its mind.

Amnesty is not a solution, but a precursor to an honest search for one.
Lacking amnesty, drug users could benefit from a commitment to freedom of
the press which protects the identity of sources who cannot speak freely,
but Telegram policy courageously prohibits noms de plume.

Never mind. Only one of us will be able to disown authorship of the one
unsigned opinion permitted on your editorial page.

Jeffrey F. Cuff

St. John's