Stan White (Globe, Oct. 6) recently extolled efforts to "re-legalize" marijuana because it is "God-given" and because the Bible refers to plants as "all good."

I believe this to be a fallacious argument in several respects. First, there are countless substances that are found naturally and assumed to be God-given that are deadly. Arsenic is an element that "can cause many health problems" significant exposure of which "can cause death" (National Library of Medicine, 2007).

As a colleague of mine recently pointed out, hemlock is also such an "all good" plant, so good it was used by ancient states to execute condemned prisoners, including Socrates.

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