Small Town News

Cannabis conversation continues

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Considering the response to my letter is roughly three times as long as the letter, my original intent of stimulating thought is clearly a success, and I appreciate someone taking the time to write a response. Now I have a handful of points I'd like to make.

First of all, I care immensely about the people on the rez, and I refer to them as miserable because I grew up with them, and have shared and borne witness to their misery. Violence, insanity, drug use ... things that make pot look like a really insignificant hill of beans. People have grown up seeing friends die in cars, seeing old elementary friends turn into meth addicts, people who've watched someone they care about go to jail for something they didn't do, people who've seen an excessively tall dam built flooding tbie native town of Keller and cutting salmon out of their way of life... putting money stress into their way of life.

The misery is justified ... and if marijuana helps these people, I am sad that there are so many Scrooges willing to try and stop them. I am sad that the Natives, of all people, aren't allowed to practice the natural medicine that works for them. The popular alternative is to go to a doctor and buy antidepressants that make your stomache bleed, make you even more depressed, make you a twitchy insomniac ... and this is perfectly fine and legal and advertised.

People determined to get high, unable to find marijuana, resort to drinking alcohol, or abusing cough syrup! or huffing fumes! or taking grandpa's blood pressure pills! I would rather teenagers ate pot brownies than raid the medicine cabinet, or worse, the cleaning closet.

I believe that the consumption of food, medicine, sights, and sounds should be rational. People shouldn't get stoned and drive, but personally, I'm more worried about the senior citizens driving on nine prescription pills with bad eyesight and high blood pressure.

I agree, marijuana has some longterm effects which are negative, depending on one's life goals, like the stereotypical spaceyness. However, it has the capacity to ease some people's misery ... and in this world where we are all born to die, I feel people should be able to do what they want until they die in the name of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Considering pot's usage by Jack Kerouac, John Lennon, Jimi Hen-drix, Bob Marley, and Aldous Huxley, all poster boys for "cool" and "genius" in their fields of literature and music, pot is hardly an unintelligent substance, and I feel it's wrong to spend tax dollars on the persecution of skaters, hippies, musicians, and common folk for engaging in a widely popular pasttime advocated by their heroes.

It's bad enough that natives have to worry about money now, since the white man came, but they can't even spend it how they want to. Imagine plants growing peacefully in the woods ... and then imagine barking dogs, helicopters, a big ol' expensive scene. It is incredibly anal of a gov't to get involved with a natural herb about as harmless as the teas found at Safeway. It is incredibly cocky and naive for law enforcement officials to have a sense of succes s for destroying plants that led directly to people being unable to find this plant and thus resort to drinking.

So what do you think, people? Should we legalize marijuana or make alcohol and antidepressants illegal?

Jacob Wagner



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© 2009 The Star Grand Coulee, Washington. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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