Dear Editor:
At the last council meeting of Tuesday, March 13, Councilman dePierro read his reasoning for why Parsippany should express opposition to proposed State legislation to permit “recreational use” of marijuana. In my opinion this unnecessary concern is designed purposely to hold back and slight the newly elected administration and Governor Murphy. In short to somehow seize a pretended moral ground. At the very least should not this issue be taken up, if at all after State legislatures decide the issue and pass a law?
dePierro’s marijuana resolution does not represent a wholesome discretion in its scope and findings; in short it is political rather than scientific or based on known facts and contentions. His resolution first proposed by former councilman Valori after he lost reelection equated marijuana with opiates and was a throwback to the 1930’s equated pot with being a “gateway drug” on a road to addiction and degeneracy, in my opinion to deliberately cause a rift not in the town’s best interest but to serve vested private interest in local governance.
What councilman dePierro read at town hall near the end of the meeting was based on an already made up mindset with selected and biased anti marijuana literature coming out of the State of Colorado, a one source one-sided paper, presented to him by a member of the public. He did no further research or due diligence concerning valid and available research from reliable and recognized sources.
The Colorado papers leave many obvious questionable assertions; increase in auto accidents for one. Siting the number of accident over a given time frame is pure randomness blamed on marijuana. This increase is simply applied to the dates after legalizing, where as marijuana was still being used illegally, and accidents are random occurrences increasing or decreasing at any time. To the contrary; however a large case-control study conducted by the National Highway Traffic safety Administration found no significant increased crash risk attributable to cannabis after controlling for drivers age, gender, race and presence of alcohol.
dePierro’s contentions that marijuana unlike alcohol remains in the body longer, as if alcohol is somehow healthier in comparison is ludicrous. His example are almost fantasy scenarios of extreme if at all cases; including woman becoming sterile. He imagines marijuana chainsmokers. He asserts seven hours after consuming alcohol all is fine again, ignoring for example alcoholism or sclerosis of the liver. A walk around the town reveals thousands of waste debris all related to alcohols readily made convenient consumption.
Everything must be seen according to it’s background when we take the role of drugs in history, beginning with the Chinese Opium Wars of 1841, 1861 fought to keep Chinese laborers on opium to be exploited by the British. The iron-triangle of Southeast Asia and the CIA during the Vietnam War; Iran-Contra drug smugglers of the NSA up to the present poppy economy of Afghanistan. Combine this with the pharmaceutical promotions of their many drugs and side effects and ask what are we really talking about here? Many social and psychological factors are involved with addiction many studies of substance abuse use often dependence as a proxy for addiction even though it is possible to be dependent without being addicted.
