6/19/2002 letters

[June 19th, 2002] WEEDWHACKED!

The "smoke a joint, lose your license" law covered in your June 12 article ["Bushwhacked!"] was created at a time when former drug czar William Bennett felt a need to "create consequences" for marijuana smokers--consequences like denying them the opportunity to function as productive, taxpaying members of society. Like any drug, marijuana can be harmful if abused, but forced unemployment and criminal records are hardly appropriate health interventions.

Diet is the No. 1 determinant of health outcomes. Do we really want big government monitoring everything that goes into our bodies? And if it is the proper role of government to punish citizens for unhealthy choices, why target marijuana? Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of nicotine.

Unfortunately, marijuana represents '60s counterculture to reactionaries in Congress intent on forcibly imposing their version of morality. The United States now has the highest incarceration rate in the world, in large part due to the war on some drugs. At an average cost of $25,071 per inmate annually, maintaining the world's largest prison system can hardly be considered fiscally conservative. This country cannot afford to continue subsidizing the prejudices of culture warriors.

Robert Sharpe
Drug Policy Alliance
Washington, D.C.

TURN THE OTHER CHEEK

What can I say: Having read through the June 5 article ["Twin Pique"] on how TITS (Tactical Interventions Targeting System) is all but claiming responsibility for the vandalism of Coors Light billboards along certain local roads, is truly disheartening. It makes one wonder if any of these people possess enough education to realize that by protesting and disfiguring these signs, they are now giving the ads they detest even more mileage then Coors had originally intended.

There is nothing wrong with these ads at all. In fact, the organization that I represent and have been a proud member of for nearly two decades, Accepting that Sex Sells (ASS), has dedicated its existence to supporting this sort of bold representation. What reasonable person could have anything against the sight of these two women (identical twins) on the Coors Light billboard? Might they be afraid that at closing time in their local hangout, they might only be left with the ugly one?

Lord knows if the membership roster for TITS were happier with their appearance, there might be entire billboards devoted to TITS. You can all imagine what a revolting sight that would be.

We here at ASS tend to look at things from a different perspective. I wonder what TITS have to say about products that are directed at females specifically.... A word of warning to the people who make the Victoria's Secret catalog: Be sure to keep TITS out of your pages, or you're next! Same for you, Maidenform.

I truly don't wish to be an adversary to the members of TITS. In fact, it's my sincere wish that both our groups could someday be allies in the crusade for responsible advertising (keeping Charles Manson from advertising children's vitamins, or something like that). In the future, I'm hoping that TITS and ASS can be viewed as distinct parts of the same larger body to watch over advertisers, instead of just individual pieces quarreling and competing against one another for more attention.

It's a sad, sad day when TITS and ASS can't get along over the most innocuous of advertising concepts. Have the terrorists already won? For those people who are content to just sit on the sidelines looking at TITS and ASS, waiting to see which looks better up close, you really need to see TITS for what they really are. Personally, I'd really like to see TITS just perk up a bit and quit dragging. After all, what good are they then?

Nate Ross
Northwest Lovejoy Street

HE'S NO RADICAL

Oh, barf. While the Nose is picking on other alternative newspapers for abandoning their ideals [June 5, 2002], in the same issue, WW is printing a letter with more unfounded praise for Savior Peter Davidson ["Radical Shrink," WW, May 15, 2002] and his alleged single-handed rescue of Multnomah County's mental-health system.

Stop crediting a run-of-the-mill shrink with ideas and common-sense solutions that we mental-health consumers and advocates have been actively fighting the county for for years--in public, and at the table. If Chris Lydgate had spent more time following up on comments I and others had given to him about Peter and the mental-health system and less time drooling over Peter's helicopter and interviewing those who receive county funds, maybe the true view, the alternative one, would have emerged: The voices of those with mental-health disabilities in this county are not listened to, while the monies for services wind up in the bottomless pockets of consultants and bureaucrats.

Sandy Hayden
Northwest Everett Street