Letters to the editor, July 23

Polson 10U Baseball thanks

Thank you to the parents, players, family and friends of the 2010 all-star season. This was a phenomenal season all around. The sponsors and volunteers were outstanding. It was an honor to be a part of such a memorable year. The First Annual “Fireball” Tournament was a huge success and is still being talked about for next year.

Your Polson 10U Baseball all-stars received numerous compliments on their sportsmanship and uniform appearance at every tournament attended. We are very proud of their accomplishments and look forward to next year’s all-star season. Great job players and parents.

Coach Lonnie Erickson, Coach Pete Plant, Coach Brit Schliep, Coach Dave Young

Polson 10U All-star coaches

Marijuana versus alcohol

Speaking privately with Richard Nixon in 1974, the late Art Linkletter offered this view on the use of marijuana versus alcohol:  “When people smoke marijuana, they smoke it to get high. In every case, when most people drink (alcohol), they drink to be sociable.”

“That’s right, that’s right,” Nixon agreed. “A person does not drink to get drunk. A person drinks to have fun.”

The following year Art Linkletter announced that he had reversed his position on pot, concluding instead that the drug’s social harms were not significant enough to warrant its criminal prohibition. Nixon, however, stayed the course, launching the so-called “war on drugs, a social policy that now results in the arrest of more than 800,000 Americans each year for violating marijuana laws.”

Decades later, the social debate regarding the use of marijuana versus alcohol rages on. Yet among objective experts who have studied the issue there remains little debate at all. Despite pot’s long-standing criminalization, scientists agree that the drug possesses far less harm than its legal and celebrated companion, alcohol.

French scientists at the state medical research institute, INSERM, published a similar review in 1998. Researchers categorized legal and illegal drugs into three distinct categories: Those that pose the greatest threat to public health, those that pose moderate harms to the public and those substances that pose little-to-no danger. Alcohol, heroin and cocaine were placed in the most dangerous category, while investigators determined that cannabis posed the least danger to public health.

In 2002 a special Canadian Senate Committee completed an exhaustive review of marijuana and health, concluding, “Scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that cannabis is substantially less harmful than alcohol and should be treated not as a criminal issue but as a social and public health issue.”

In Australia, in 2007, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare hired a team of scientists to assess the impact of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs on public health. Researchers reported that the consumption of alcohol was the most significant contributor to death and disease. “Alcohol harm was responsible for 3.2 percent of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia. By comparison, cannabis use was responsible for zero deaths and only .2 percent of the estimated total burden of disease and injury in Australia.”

Such findings are not just relegated to overseas. In 1989, a California state research advisory panel conducted its own review of the health effects of pot and alcohol. They, like their international peers, concluded, “an objective consideration of marijuana shows that it is responsible for less damage to the individual and to society than are alcohol and cigarettes.”

For more than three decades, America’s marijuana policies have been based upon rhetoric. Perhaps it’s time to begin listening to what the experts have to say instead of listening to what politicians and lawmakers are saying.

Monte Jenkins

Ronan resident

Invading Iraq

Four years ago I submitted a letter to the editor which did get printed in a couple of area papers. The subject matter bears repeating today.  

G.W. Bush was in the White House. Karl Rove was ranting and roving the halls of power. Dick Cheney was spewing out his inaccurate and totally inane analyses of our engagement in Iraq as a most effective and sensible war on terrorism. And we, the people, were mesmerized by the stories being told through a U.S. media beholden to the administration. 

The basic message of that letter was an idea that grew from the many things I was reading and hearing from learned, informed, sensible, and astute people very familiar with Middle East people, the cultures, and how the U. S. invasion was being viewed as a battle against international terrorism.

The letter pointed out what the experts were saying: “Invading Iraq only feeds into the whole international terrorism movement.  It has energized thousands of young people to join the movement.  And instead of being safer here in America, we have only increased our chances of someday being attacked by elements of the various international terrorist movements.”

That letter referred to the need for a  movement which I now call the “International Terrorist Elimination Movement” (ITEM). This would be a rather small but fully empowered body of carefully selected international leaders and thinkers from the military, politics, diplomatic corps, education, economics, religion, and social movements.

Their mission would be to work worldwide in identifying the most active radical and dangerous groups; organizing infiltration of these groups and learning everything about them; convincing the host nations that they must help eradicate these terrorist organizations; and beginning to address the root causes of these diabolical groups and doing something about it. For starters, the education and assistance to impressionable young people who are without hope, for example.  Yes, it takes time, but we have fooled around for 10 years now and gained little if anything.  

This requires important international cooperation. The NATO military forces are not doing the job. They are not trained to do the job.  They are trained in military logistics which will not work in fighting and eliminating international terrorism. It just won’t work. The world deserves a new strategy to address and curb international terrorism.

Bob McClellan

Polson resident