Pubdate: Thu, 10 Oct 2002 Source: Arizona Republic (AZ) Copyright: 2002 The Arizona Republic Contact: http://www.arizonarepublic.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/24 Author: Dick Foreman Note: Dick Foreman is a longtime East Valley resident active in civic, educational and political affairs. BACK PROP. 203? ARE WE ALL CRAZY? John Sperling's continued funding of efforts to legalize drugs in Arizona now reaches ever further in yet another crusade (with fellow wealthy gadfly partners George Soros and Peter Lewis) to not only decriminalize possession of marijuana and other drugs but to also have our Department of Public Safety hand it out free to users in 2 ounce baggies. I can't begin to relate the repugnance I feel for the low-life pushers that patrol our schools to approach, befriend and ultimately infect our children with these poisons as they walk through our neighborhoods. Studies show that a vast majority of our school-age children have knowledge of where to buy marijuana, and most have tried it. And now, Mr. Sperling wants to give this entire, illicit, dirty, poisonous underground industry a partner in our state cops. Are we all crazy? The polls show that this measure is going to pass. Ballot Proposition 203, the Drug Medicalization, Prevention, and Control Act of 2002 is well named, sort of. It will "medicate" nobody (marijuana is still illegal under federal law), it will "prevent" law enforcement from putting the bad guys away even as they are forced to become the pushers' patsies, and it will "control" drugs by injecting more of them into the blood streams of our kids. I suppose this is one way to deal with poison. Legalize it. The protagonists, playing on your sympathy for the ill, have a cowardly, hidden agenda that needs your attention and disdain. If I had as much money as these guys, I'd at least get a wing named after me at a drug treatment center somewhere. One of the reasons I hear most often to support Proposition 202 on Indian gaming is that gambling is not a good thing, so it should be restricted to the reservations. And, after all, the Indian nations got a bad deal and this is, more or less, a payback. So, therefore, 202 is OK. If these are the parameters to dole out largesse and assuage guilt, we only have to determine who gets legalized drugs and prostitution to solve two more problems. Tempe Union governing board candidate Mary Lou Taylor has been a teacher for 38 years. Taylor now wants to teach a few things at the board level, such as making an all out effort to support the classroom teacher, such as supporting site based councils as the most logical place to allocate school resources, and (my personal favorite) to hold the school board accountable for policy and not let it micro-manage the district. She joins a talented field of challengers for three seats. Pat Edwards has a difficult task. He is running against an incumbent to get elected to the Maricopa Community College board. Governing board members are defeated about as often as a solar eclipse, but Edwards' energy and drive gives him a shot. Besides, he's got a novel approach. He wants to bring fiscal discipline and better financial management to the community college district. You can contact him for information at ElectPatEdwards.com or call him at (602) 620-9101. It's something to think about. In every case I can think of, the people now calling for "budget reform" at the state level never uttered the words until we had a budget deficit. I do not think they mean what they pretend to let us think they mean. - --- MAP posted-by: Alex