October 28-November 3, 2004

mailbag

Letters to the Editor

by the Readers

A Co-Sleeper Responds

I am disgusted that the Health Department let itself be pressured by Jill Porter's articles [News, "The Big Sleep Controversy," Doron Taussig, Oct. 21, 2004]. [Commissioner John] Domzalski's moderate, cautious initial approach seems much more balanced than Porter's dramatics.

Claire McGuire
East Mt. Airy

Love Him, Love Him Not

As a psychoanalyst, [Slant, "Why They Hate," Dr. Lawrence D. Blum, Oct. 21, 2004] resonated. I would also recommend Bush On The Couch, written by another psychiatrist who has studied the president for almost four years, to better understand his behaviors. And let us not forget, Bush was an alcoholic—which he is ashamed to admit—who replaced alcohol with religion, instead of therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous, to find out what drove him to drink excessively.

In other words, he lacks the insight to recognize his mistakes and change his course.

Deborah Komins
Center City

Another liberal diagnosis from a close-minded professional with an agenda. Give me a break. All the good doctor need do is observe with a little more humility and a little less highbrow. Republican offices are being ransacked. Teresa Heinz Kerry is displaying continuous ignorance (oh excuse me: honesty). John Kerry is blasting some geese for a vote. I think you get the idea.

Both sides display anger, with the reactionary "liberals" leading the charge. At least the Republicans can voice their opinions without screaming.

Jim H.
via e-mail

Blazin' Mad

[News, "Smoke Break," Doron Taussig, Oct. 21, 2004] contained a laugh-out-loud explanation about why there are marijuana laws. [Philadelphia Police Inspector Joe Sullivan] said it was a "public nuisance" and that "people don't feel comfortable walking by a corner where people are smoking marijuana." To make some people more comfortable at street corners, the U.S. has filled its prisons with more than 2 million people, wasted billions of dollars that could have been spent on social needs, destroyed untold numbers of lives, broken up families, created an utterly avoidable spinoff violent-crime situation and corrupted medical science almost across the board.

He isn't giving the real reasons for marijuana prohibition, which would expose the fact that the laws are illegitimate. Marijuana, and its nonpsychoactive cousin hemp, was prohibited to protect various powerful corporate interests from competition with a benign, easily grown, unpatented, public-domain plant with extraordinary multiple uses.

It's a massive human rights atrocity. People are arrested, not for any harm to anyone or anything, but to prevent public acceptance of a plant that threatens profits of corporate interests. On the other hand, the industries that benefit [from] cannabis prohibition have harmed virtually everyone on earth, caused animal extinctions and devastated natural environments everywhere. Legislators and other officials go along because they enjoy the money from these industries and because the laws offer a pretense to hit on dissenters and those who do not mindlessly believe corporate claims or robotically obey illegitimate law. Understanding these reasons is a prerequisite toward eventual relegalization of arguably the most useful plant on the planet.

John Jonik
Kensington