No good will come from state Legislature legalizing pot

Marijuana use impairs overall cognitive function, muddles rational thinking and damages decision-making and memory. It dulls motivation and produces dependence. Legalization guarantees more stoned-out people operating motor vehicles and other dangerous behaviors.

I became hooked on marijuana, and it was hard to quit. I know marijuana users who say they can give it up any time they want. But they don’t because they’re hooked.

Marijuana is especially detrimental to developing brains. No matter how SB 704 is written, youngsters will get their hands on marijuana. Already young people smoke marijuana with vaping devices, inhaling concentrated doses of the drug.

Legal marijuana will not decrease alcohol or other drug use; it will just be another recreational drug. We can look at legal recreational drugs to foresee outcomes of legalization. Alcohol and tobacco combined cause more death, disease, violence, domestic abuse, crime and other antisocial behavior than all other societal factors combined. As this is written comes news that alcoholic liver disease among young women in the U.S is rising off the charts. The last thing we need is another recreational drug.

The idea that taxing marijuana makes legalization worthwhile is ludicrous. No amount of money is more important than mentally healthy individuals pursuing purposeful lives. Drug use blows all that up, and legalization will only worsen the drug holocaust of alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and opioids already devastating our society.

Legalizing marijuana is a terrible idea. No to SB 704.

Jerome Kellner

Kahului