American Legion Magazine Letter to the Editor
The most recent issue of American Legion Magazine had several letters to the editor regarding medical marijuana, the health benefits, whether it should be decriminalized, etc. (Yes I'm a member, having been in the Navy from 1969 to 1973). Some of the letters were surprisingly open-minded and libertarian/live-and-let-live.
And then there was the following bilge-fest, which I shall proceed to rant about here:
“If the plant had great value, why haven't the medical profession and drug companies taken from it what works and produced a pill obtainable only by prescription? All who sell, use or grow the stuff (except as noted above) should be most severely punished. Its apparently widespread use is purely to render the nation a bunch of stupid, worthless druggies some nation will find easy to defeat.”
James G. Hudkins, Cuyahoga Falls, OH
W? T? F???
Where to begin...
Is this guy just dumber than a bag of hammers? A paid shill for the pharmaceutical industry and/or the drug-testing industry and/or the Prison Industrial Complex? Or maybe his letter was tongue-in-cheek; and he was just doing a hilarious imitation of a mean-and-stupid power-crazed lifer (which the Navy was heavily infested/infected with in the early '70s).
posted by Tom Harper @ 9:18 PM
4 Comments:
His opinion was probably formed by watching old Dragnet reruns.
Jim: Dragnet reruns plus constantly watching and re-watching Reefer Madness and Marijuana: Assassin of Youth.
In a way he has a point and people have been saying the same thing for decades. I remember an old rumor that the tobacco companies had patents on marijuana cigarettes ready to go (never seen it proven) and that the all powerful drug companies have been ready with all sorts of pot products ready to take off. Given the poisonous trash they unleashed on us during the Clinton 90's I gotta believe they are ready to go and can make it happen if they really want (yeah right $$$$$$!)
Erik
Erik: The most maddening part of that asshole's letter was the authoritarian punitive mentality (toward "drugs") that I thought had disappeared during the past 40 years. Since the draft was abolished, there probably isn't the polarization between the lifers and people who enlisted in order to avoid the draft. But back then it was like Easy Rider every day -- you wouldn't believe the lifers' hatred and venom toward anyone who had liberal ideas or was even suspected of being "on drugs." It didn't matter which drug. All drugs -- except alcohol of course -- were interchangeable.
Anyway, that letter was like a flashback to 45 years ago, to the legions of dimwitted redneck lifers that I assumed had either joined the 21st century (or even the 1980s) or died of old age, or something.
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