Pubdate: Tue, 12 Jul 2016
Source: Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR)
Copyright: 2016 Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Inc.
Contact: http://www2.arkansasonline.com/contact/voicesform/
Website: http://www2.arkansasonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/25
Note: Accepts letters to the editor from Arkansas residents only

GOING TO POT

See Through All the Smoke

NOT JUST one but a couple of competing proposals to legalize 
"medical" marijuana in Arkansas may appear on November's already 
crowded ballot. There's both an initiated act and a constitutional 
amendment in the works. The campaign manager for the first has been 
pressing the sponsor of the second to withdraw his. If both appear on 
the ballot, says Melissa Fults, both will fail. But its sponsor, 
David Couch, says nothing doing. Happily, there's enough opposition 
to both bad ideas to indicate they're both in trouble. Arkansas 
doesn't need either one, let alone both.

To quote Governor Asa Hutchinson, who used to direct the country's 
Drug Enforcement Administration: "I believe that while we want to 
provide medicine to anyone who needs it, this opens up a lot of doors 
that causes more problems than it solves." What to do? Call a doctor. 
As the governor says, "Any efforts in relation to voter education and 
reference to opposition should be from the medical community, from 
physicians. Those are trusted voices that the people of Arkansas 
would listen to. I have asked the surgeon general [Greg Bledsoe] to 
be a lead spokesperson in reference to those initiatives and 
articulating any concerns that he has from a physician viewpoint." In 
short, don't take two and call him the morning after election day.

Good old dependable Jerry Cox of the Arkansas Family Council is also 
on the case. This measure, he says of one of these bad ideas, "starts 
to look and smell like a monopoly." Adding, "A small handful of 
wealthy people would control the marijuana trade in Arkansas." One of 
the outfits backing legalized marijuana is Bevans Family Limited 
Partnership, and its address matches that of Lake Liquor in Maumelle, 
Ark. What a non-coincidence, for Bevans Limited seems to have more 
than one iron in this roaring fire.

IT'S HARD keeping up with all these various proposals, their 
supporters and opponents, for one seems worse than the other. But 
it's easy enough to get rid of them all -just vote Against, Against 
and if necessary Against again. Wipe the slate clean.

It's a wonder how Brian Fanney, our man in charge of clearing the 
smoky air that hovers over all these dubious propositions, can keep 
up with them. For they just keep proliferating-like Hillary Clinton's 
contradictions and Donald Trump's erratic outbursts. The choice 
between those two next fall, a choice between the devil we know and 
the one we don't, may be as confusing as this dust-up over loco weed. 
If only there were a place on the ballot for None of the Above, he 
might win in a landslide. It's quite a year, 2016-hard to puzzle out 
till it's mercifully over. If then.

The function of the editorial writer, someone once said, is to come 
down after the battle is over and shoot the wounded. This year the 
field is littered with the wounded-wounded politicians, wounded 
ideas, and a wounded republic. But this country has seen much worse 
(1861-65) and thrived nevertheless. As it shall again. As a sign on a 
battered old car we once saw put it: JESUS SAVES, and in small print, 
If You Can Stand the Pull.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom