Pot principles
Anyone living in Boulder is no stranger to the medical marijuana dispensary phenomenon that has been unfolding recently. While the current situation is certainly a step in the right direction towards drug policy reform, prefacing all things marijuana with the term “medical” is a bit irking.
Personally I enjoy, and have enjoyed, recreationally smoking marijuana for years. But as young, perfectly healthy co-workers, friends and neighbors retrieve their medical cards for things like chronic pain, or sleep apnea, I often ask myself who they are fooling.
Of course, there are patients who greatly benefit from the service, but unfortunately all of the “patients” I know, understandably, just like to get high. While obtaining the privilege of buying exotic strands of organic, locally grown grass from a storefront is certainly alluring, the principle of lying to a doctor seems foolish. I suppose it’s a silly moral pedestal to stand on, thinking back to the days of being terrified to drive with a gram of marijuana in my possession, but for now it feels valid.
The economic gain is certainly notable. Local papers can surely attest to the rise in advertising, the tax dollars don’t hurt either, and no one working for a dispensary is complaining. But I can’t help but wonder if the original proponents of the medical marijuana movement, and the patients who truly need it, feel a dishonor to their cause when they open the paper to trendy, tie-dyed dispensary ads with hip and marketable business names. If suddenly the local paper was riddled with pharmaceutical ads and pharmacies were being built at the rate dispensaries are, it is likely that the reception wouldn’t be so hot. It is my hope that “medical” dispensaries are just a necessary formality towards complete legalization, a way of easing the public in gradually.
So while I continue to illegally enjoy a puff now and again, I will wait patiently for legalization to appear on the ballot and hope that when it does, it passes.
Robert Kyle Ussery/Boulder
Clean, cheap coal?
It appears that the coal industry is trying very hard to convince us that burning coal is the cheapest and the cleanest way of generating electricity. Last week in the Camera and Denver Post, “American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity” bought three very expensive full-page ads touting that coal is low-cost, reliable, increasingly clean and it is the better choice than burning natural gas. What is their motive?
The fact is, the coal
industry doesn’t want us to move beyond coal. Certainly, it has been
proven to be fairly reliable, but “low-cost” and “clean”?
Leslie Glustrom of Clean
Energy Action (a Boulder nonprofit that is exposing the true costs and
availability of coal — www.cleanenergyaction.org)
recently noted: “The coal industry fails to mention that the price that
Xcel Energy paid for coal in 2009 ($1.52/million British thermal units)
is the price that in 2008 they had expected to pay in 2035. That means
coal cost estimates were only off by about a quarter century.”
Folks, the price is going
up, and there is hard evidence that we don’t have a 200-year supply.
Coal is not exempt from the law of supply and demand.
Furthermore, “clean coal”
is an oxymoron. Heavy metals (especially mercury — a deadly poison),
particulates (asthma and lung disease) and toxic coal ash (poisoning our
water supplies, feedlots and more) are being dumped into the
environment every day, not to mention mind-boggling amounts of
greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide and others). When they say “clean
coal,” it means that they will have to build a new kind of coal plant
that can strip the carbon dioxide out of the exhaust and pump it into
the earth.
Carbon
capture and storage is an unproven and costly technology with a host of
serious problems (groundwater acidification and, “Oops, it leaked”). How
many clean coal plants in the U.S.? At last count there were two
demonstration plants. This is the answer to cleaning up coal? And what
is the cost of a clean coal plant?
Burning coal to generate electricity isn’t going away
any time soon, but now that Colorado has a 30 percent Renewable
Portfolio Standard, the coal industry’s dominance is starting to fade.
Don’t listen to their
propaganda.
The
health of the planet and of future generations is at stake. Renewable
energy is the answer and the faster we bring it on board, the healthier
we’ll all be.
Teresa
Foster/Longmont
Why I quit the Dems
I’m no longer a
Democrat. They have repeatedly let us down. We have more war and an
expanded military budget with shrunken allocations for domestic needs
that cry out for help. Truckloads of money went to banks, yet they still
give monstrously large bonuses to the elite while they foreclose
houses. President Obama has plans to expand “free trade” that is
responsible for exporting jobs (e.g. NAFTA and WTO). Single-payer health
insurance was off the table, and only a few would even consider it,
although between 70 percent and 80 percent of us want it. The new bill
makes cuts in Medicare and still leaves loads of people without
coverage.
How many times do we
have to be let down before the picture is clear? The Democrats have
little interest in what we want or need. Neither do the Republicans.
Bob Kinsey is running
as a Green for U.S. Senate. Check him out at www.kinseyforsenate.org.
Tom Moore/Boulder
Weeping hypocrites
Poor [House Minority
Leader] John Boehner! So bitterly you wept as you bemoaned the Democrats
ramming health care through Congress, and so pitifully you sob that
they’ve violated the will of the American people! But you see, John, I
have an attention span, so I remember the past eight years, when both
Congress and the entire Bush administration were doing both of those
every minute, and you were loving it! Typical Republian hypocrisy.
J. Andrew
Smith/Bloomfield, N.J.
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