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OPINION
Public health and safety

Decide to legalize pot with caution: Your Say

Comments from Facebook are edited for clarity and grammar:

Oregon, Alaska and Washington, D.C., voters will be considering measures to legalize marijuana.

The effort to legalize marijuana is both good and bad. States are making it legal for the tax and revenue, but it's still classified as a Schedule I narcotic by the federal government. It should not be. If we know now that it's basically harmless, then it should be treated like a vegetable, not glorified as a drug. Legalize it federally.

— Joshua Cofer

Marijuana prohibition was never about plants. It was always about people.

Steve Cooper

The government has no right to tell us what to put in our bodies, even beyond drugs like marijuana. But legalizing and regulating all drugs, I don't see as feasible. This would lead to massive public health and economic issues. Just imagine heroin addicts sharing the same needle. You would get several cases of AIDS, hepatitis and other infections. Parents have the task to educate their children. If they fail, we also fail as a society.

Chris Cabcab

Letters to the editor:

I don't understand what the fuss is about the legalization of marijuana. The opponents act as if it is a synthetic drug that was recently created and is decimating the population.

Only people who have been living in a cave all their lives don't know that marijuana is a weed that has been used for generations by people around the world.

Does it do bodily harm? Well, if the government would allow unimpeded testing we might find out, but given its history that would be almost redundant.

Of course a small minority of people might suffer adverse effects from it.

However, the same can be said of sugar, trans fats, caffeine, prescription medications and even drinking too much water.

The argument is absurd.

Edward Lumas; Grand Rapids, Mich.

Public safety needs to be the primary consideration for the millions of Americans voting on marijuana legalization on Election Day. Medical use aside, revenue generation and decriminalization are often the primary pro-legalization arguments, but neither addresses abuse nor supersedes public safety.

Policymakers should learn from mistakes made during the end of alcohol prohibition and designate a significant percentage of profits from alcohol sales toward treatment and research. Voters in regions considering such measures need to think long and hard so that down the road they don't regret leaping head-first, haphazardly to legalize marijuana use without establishing measures to appropriately deal with the fallout.

Janina J. Kean; President/CEO, High Watch Recovery Center; Kent, Conn.

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