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LETTER: Say ‘no’ to legalizing recreational marijuana

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Say ‘no’ to legalizing recreational marijuana

I read in Sept. 26 edition of the paper that Gov. Tom Wolf wants to legalize marijuana in Pennsylvania. He bases this on the indoctrination tour of Lt. Gov. John Fetteman that was attended by more than 10,000 citizens who supposedly overwhelmingly support this idea. I would like to point out that since Pennsylvania’s population is almost 13 million, this represents only .00076% of the population.

This is the last thing that we need. It’s bad enough that we have legalized medical marijuana. At a time when we are trying to stop people from smoking cigarettes and vaping, we want to encourage them to smoke pot? This makes absolutely no sense. I firmly believe that people who would never think of smoking marijuana because it is illegal would consider using it once it is legal. Has the governor thought about the fact that many more people will be driving high? Isn’t it bad enough that we have drunken drivers, now we’ll have to be concerned about more high drivers.

Marijuana kills brain cells, and I dare say that no one has any brain cells that they can afford to lose. It also is a gateway drug. The body builds up a tolerance. Just like no one starts out smoking several packs of cigarettes a day or drinking several bottles of beer or glasses of other alcohol, the effect of marijuana will diminish and they’ll need to move to stronger drugs to get high. This even applies to over-the–counter painkillers. If you take them every day following the instructions on the bottle, after a while they will not have the same effect and you will have to take more and more. With the great opioid crisis we have in this state, this is the last thing that we need.

I really think that the real reason for doing this is for the taxes that we can collect. We have more than enough tax dollars flowing to Harrisburg. We don’t need to risk the health and welfare of the citizens of this state to get more.

There needs to be more study of the ramifications of the effects of legalizing marijuana. Better yet, I appeal to the governor and our legislators to drop this idea completely.

Christine Zienkiewicz

Canonsburg{&end}

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