Pubdate: Thu, 06 Oct 2011
Source: Standard-Times (New Bedford, MA)
Copyright: 2011 South Coast Media Group
Contact:  http://www.southcoasttoday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/422
Author: Diane Bolton

LEGAL MARIJUANA MEANS PLENTY MORE PROBLEMS

Today's infants and children are the beneficiaries of the drug and sex 
revolution. In many cases their young lives are spent in hell's 
kitchen. They can't perform well in school because they can't pay 
attention or calm down.

The potheads of the old guard don't know what they don't know. If they 
had to review the in-depth studies of the harm of smoking "weed" or 
tobacco, they couldn't pay attention long enough to absorb the basic 
facts if they wanted to. They simply want to legalize "pot" so they 
can continue their addiction by smoking it, not getting arrested and 
looking like heroes doing it ("Barney Frank looks to remove another 
taboo," Sept. 13).

Addiction and selfishness go hand in hand. No matter how harmful the 
substance or behavior, they, the addicted slaves, don't care because 
that is the definition of addiction. The suggestion that medical 
science has no medication for nausea is a manipulative ploy once again 
characteristic of the addicted mind set.

This is not the kind of decision-making children need. They need role 
models to help them steer clear of the dangers of "tuning out and turning on."

At a certain stage, over 50 perhaps, one needs to get in the practice 
of getting up in the morning to think of others and what you can do to 
help them. It isn't about "me, me, me" anymore. As Abraham Maslow 
affirmed in his observations of the older adult life stages; there are 
the healthy expressions of generativity or the unhealthy impulses of 
stagnation.

To survive and thrive, children need the leaders of family and society 
expressing generativity. Children do not need selfish, addicted and 
stagnating potheads afraid of death running their lives.

I speak of the needs of the children because they are the ones left to 
dig out of the dregs the "me generation" has left behind. Don't you 
think we should be more focused on their future and leaving them a 
healthy society?

Diane Bolton

New Bedford
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