Drug Diversions

Pot is the hot topic locally. Focus on pot and we can forget about hunger, billions for war, jobs sent abroad to help greed-heads’ profits soar. Name some products not made overseas. Could sending jobs abroad have something to do with our economic depression?

Pot. How about alcohol and tobacco? Alcohol is the most used by youngsters and easily available. Tobacco: “Add up all the deaths each year from homicides, illegal drugs, vehicle crashes, alcohol, suicides and fires and you still won’t match the number of people who die from smoking.” (Public Citizen, Nov.-Dec. ’09.) And yet cigarettes are the least regulated of all major products.

One can drink publicly and not be imprisoned. One can be jailed for mere possession of pot. For years, I’ve felt it’s the alcohol industry that has kept pot illegal. Jim Hightower (Lowdown, Nov. ’09) notes that pot “poses nowhere near the health danger of alcohol yet no one proposes to destroy breweries or imprison people for drinking martinis.”

May I hope Santa Barbara will start focusing on jobs, the homeless, hunger, and issues of much higher priority than pot? – Dorothy F. McNeil