To the editor: LZ Granderson accurately means that the federal Managed Substances Act signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 is bigoted and unscientific. It’s also grossly incomplete, as that act gave political sacred cows a free cross. (“Marijuana does not actually gasoline the cartels. It is US legal guidelines that drive the violence,” Opinion, February 3)
For instance, the British medical journal Lancet reported in 2010 a scientific comparability of medicine’ particular person harms in addition to their social harms, and alcohol had the worst rating general. In the US, the Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention reviews that tobacco use kills practically half one million People annually.
None of those substances are talked about anyplace within the Managed Substances Act. These omissions breed cynicism.
Whereas we must always admire Senate Democrats’ efforts to vary the federal classification of hashish as a drug as harmful and addictive as heroin, they’re messing with a completely rotten basis.
The Managed Substances Act needs to be scrapped, and American legal guidelines needs to be based mostly on a complete, science-based analysis of the medication’ harms to each customers and society.
Brian Roberts, Covina
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To the editor: Really, sure – marijuana fuels violence. Has Granderson thought-about the environmental violence attributable to unlawful marijuana rising in nationwide parks and forests?
Armed park rangers, at nice danger to themselves, usually uncover unlawful marijuana rising operations. Such a web site was lately discovered and faraway from Jail Canyon in Loss of life Valley.
And what concerning the unlawful use of water and the gallons of pesticides and pesticides left to movement into these parks’ watersheds?
These issues existed earlier than marijuana was legalized in California, however now with so many sellers and consumers, the issues are multiplied. The federal legalization of marijuana will solely make them worse.
Phillip Roullard, San Diego
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To the editor: Phrases matter. In an in any other case glorious piece, Granderson referenced “hashish” 5 instances, “pot” 4 and “weed” as soon as. Why would somebody who advocates its legalization (or not less than decriminalization) confuse his readers?
Utilizing the pejoratives “pot” and “weed” is akin to referring to alcoholic drinks as “booze” and “hooch”—not one thing you’ll learn in nearly any information publication at the moment.
Certainly, it’s excessive time that the information institution (and positively The Instances) normalized using the scientifically right time period hashish when writing a couple of drug that has been vilified in Western society for not less than the final 100 years.
Brian Lent, Altadena