Letter: Marijuana laws shed light on our priorities

Friday, Nov. 11, 2005 | 8:38 a.m.

Regarding Denver's passage of an initiative that will take away criminal penalties for adults who possess marijuana:

Although I'll be the first to admit that it appears obvious that both individual citizens and various organizations having joined this campaign to legalize medicinal and recreational use of marijuana, each has their various motives.

It appears nonetheless that there is a wealth of experiential data from countries that have preceded us in this matter supporting the logic of this approach. That is, reduced teen use, monetary and organizational resources being made available for higher priority matters, such as domestic security, prosecution of violent crimes and the issue of abuse of prescription medications that are often more addictive and have more serious social effects than the whole herb use of marijuana.

All you have to do is sit and watch one of the popular genre of pharmaceutical commercials that one sees on TV today. How nonchalantly the official-looking man in the lab coat mentions side effects that are potentially life threatening -- all offered as a trade-off to avoid some gastric discomfort that could better be treated by diet and habit modifications.

When a man using a knife to rob my son gets off with three years probation, even though luckily a police officer witnessed the whole incident, and someone gets a minimum mandatory sentence of seven years for growing marijuana in his basement, where are our priorities?

Let's take away this source of revenue for all the illegal entrepreneurs, many of which are no doubt involved in matters that are more threatening to our existence as a nation.

Ronald Robertson

Las Vegas