Let the marijuana project take shape

To The Eagle:

The brouhaha over legalized pot that has churned through several recent editions of the Eagle has been entertaining and informative -- I have 'em neatly filed as "The Pakalolo Papers." The protagonists, coming at it from several directions, seem well informed, accurate and up to date. The anti's (comprised mostly of Commissioner Cothren and staunch defender Schreiber) are pounding the drum to make points all of us agreed with before the argument started -- drugs ruin lives, and kids shouldn't have 'em. No kiddin'! But the whole debate misses the point.

President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971, and we've been losing it ever since -- a war based strictly on prohibition, interdiction, and prosecution. After all our experience, we can't even keep drugs out of secure places like prisons, or controlled places like the military, and we have a black market funneling billions of dollars to terrorist organizations. Marijuana itself has little history of harm, none of overdose or death, and our prohibition culture produces a reaction in kids that my wife (retired probation/parole officer) refers to as "bean syndrome." Just stand your truculent teenager against the wall, shake your finger in his face and yell, "Do not put beans up your nose." The result will be painfully predictable.

So the hope is that legalization will bring the growing and retailing into the open, control the quality (safety) of the product and eventually lower the price, putting the black market on a starvation diet. Won't solve the kid problem, but won't make it any worse either, and the black market can't survive on kids alone. Any economic gain for either the county or its citizens will be incidental and minor -- quibbling about who does or doesn't get tax money is pretty childish, and denying a retail license to the Rosburg Store is pathetic. It would give a shot in the arm to a place that's always been a vibrant little community center (we watched Mike Swanson struggle valiantly to keep it going for two decades) and it is hard to see how it could become a "den of iniquity" or cause SR4 traffic jams by drivers suffering from reefer madness.

So, a modest proposal for those opposed to the legalization effort: Stand down for awhile (as Paul S. has offered to do) and let the project take shape as the voters envisioned. A few years down the road, if it fails, you will have the consummate satisfaction of saying "I told you so," to those of us operating on half our wits.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island