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Letters to the Editor:

Letter to City Council:

This year the Viking Youth Football program (non-profit organization) is being charged exorbitant fees for using the athletic field at Samo High. This will keep many kids out of the program, as parents are being asked to absorb the costs. Many of the boys are from single-parent families, and some are from low-income families. Santa Monica needs to step up and support their sport youth programs in a proactive way. Why not sponsor some of these players or offer scholarships for those who can’t afford to get involved? Don’t complain about gang activity in your community if you bury your head in the sand on this issue.

Our grandson is beginning his fifth season with this league. We have followed his teams over the years to different communities. Santa Monica should be ashamed to host other teams on the Santa Monica field. It is a disgrace. They have filthy porta-potties for bathrooms, rickety stands with weeds growing under them, and now they want to charge $1,000 for one-day use? Even the high school football team has to play at Santa Monica Community College.

We live in La Verne near their high school. They have a beautiful sports complex that is free of charge for everyone. Most Southern California communities are building and maintaining these facilities as they realize how important it is for our youth’s health and well-being.

Thank you for your attention to this long letter.

Sincerely,

Joyce and Will Rodgers

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Re: Medipot Harassment Lets Illicit Use Thrive, August 2-8, 2007

In the final paragraph of his featured opinion essay, Tom Elias essentially said that “if marijuana is truly destructive,” why not focus anti-marijuana police and adjudication monies and forces against large-scale commercial growers of cannabis “whose sales have truly destructive potential.” Respectfully however, the problem with what he said is that marijuana is NOT truly destructive. On the other hand, the federal anti-marijuana laws are destructive, immoral and in violation of the supreme law of the land that is the U.S. Constitution.

The marijuana prohibition is immoral and destructive because destructive punishments initiated by police for its use almost never bear a relation to a crime itself. That is to say that the act of consuming cannabis is not an immoral, dangerous or a destructive act. Conversely, consuming natural cannabis is much safer and healthier than consuming alcohol, tobacco, many foods and drinks and many-to-most pharmaceutical “drugs.” Poisonous house-cleaning products are available for purchase every day by the endless gallon, but mostly healthy cannabis is banned from purchase, or even cultivation. Tellingly, while marijuana use is not destructive, the fines, torments, adulterations, disenfranchisements and murders meted out for its acquisition are immoral and highly destructive.

The marijuana prohibition is, technically, unconstitutional. The reason for this is that the Constitution enumerates the limits it places on the federal government in relation to the individual states and the citizenry. The U.S. Constitution does not give the federal government the right or power to prohibit the personal consumption of anything at all. That the so-called “Supreme Court” has collectively enabled this unconstitutionality and immorality, says much more about a lack of wisdom or humanity among its “justices” than it does about the utility of cannabis. By extending federal authority onto matters of state and personal sovereignty, both Congress and the Supreme Court have, technically, broken our peoples’ supreme law.

Moral democracies such as ours are supposed to have tolerant governments that are responsive to the will of the people, and the people have made it clear that we do not want cannabis prohibition as a matter of law or policy, unconstitutional or labeled otherwise.

Ivan Smason, Ph.D., J.D.

Santa Monica

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Not only should medical marijuana be made available to patients in need, but adult recreational use should be regulated. Drug policies modeled after alcohol prohibition have given rise to a youth-oriented black market. Illegal drug dealers don’t ID for age, but they do recruit minors immune to adult sentences. So much for protecting the children.

Throwing more money at the problem is no solution. Attempts to limit the supply of illegal drugs while demand remains constant only increase the profitability of drug trafficking. For addictive drugs like heroin, a spike in street prices leads desperate addicts to increase criminal activity to feed desperate habits. The drug war doesn’t fight crime, it fuels crime.

Taxing and regulating marijuana, the most popular illicit drug, is a cost-effective alternative to never-ending drug war. As long as marijuana distribution remains in the hands of organized crime, consumers will continue to come into contact with drugs like methamphetamine. This “gateway” is the direct result of a fundamentally flawed policy.

Given that marijuana is arguably safer than alcohol – the plant has never been shown to cause an overdose death – it makes no sense to waste tax dollars on failed policies that finance organized crime and facilitate hard drug use. Drug policy reform may send the wrong message to children, but I like to think the children are more important than the message.

Sincerely,

Robert Sharpe, MPA

Policy Analyst,

Common Sense for Drug Policy

Washington, DC

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Open Letter to Senator Feinstein

Senator Feinstein:

My confidence in you and your colleagues has withered to winter. With the passing of this latest warrantless wiretapping legislation and the absolute inability (or complicity) of this congress and senate to perform the oversight required by what our president has called “A worthless piece of paper” – that’s the Constitution of the United States. I can only surmise that this once great democracy is doomed.

Your office recently alerted me to the fact that you will not pursue impeachment of our highest office because our country is too divided. Let me suggest that this division will only be healed through your sworn duty to uphold the precepts outlined in that worthless piece of paper, and can only grow with this administration’s dangerous continuance.

Fascism is a word often heard but little understood by post boom generations. Hitler is a historic memory. Nazi Germany, a thing of the past. It might be nice to be an aristocrat under fascist rule during a power grab, but I am a small man, and my concerns are not your concerns. This I understand and accept, and I await this ice age with trepidation.

Sincerely,

Devin McGuire

Venice, CA

in Uncategorized
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