"Blunt Talk," Patricia Calhoun, November 26
Let's face it. If we were really having a blunt talk about marijuana, we'd be saying things like this: Forget the bullshit about legalizing marijuana via the ridiculous means of its so-called medicinal properties. Was alcohol legalized due to its medicinal properties? No. Charlie Brown complains about a mere "thousand dispensaries" in Los Angeles, and yet I guarantee there are tens of thousands of liquor outlets, stores and bars where liquor is sold — near schools like Dora Moore Elementary. Every state in this country allows private citizens to brew, ferment and distill alcohol for their own use. Why should it be any different for marijuana?
So the blunt talk about marijuana should not be about its medical use; it should be about total repeal of all of the ridiculous prohibitionary laws from the federal level on down.
Bill Gardner
Denver
Here we are again: Charlie Brown — the "Blockhead" — is just like all the other poli-tricksters, and all he wants is money! As much of it as he can steal via legal minutiae and loophole regulations! Brown just went out to L.A. so that nobody here could get a picture of him getting high!
To all the "legal pot users": Please, please, please let us actively vote out the anti-420 elected officials like Charlie Brown and replace them with pro-420 representatives before blockheads screw up the industry for all medical marijuana patients!
Keith Hammock
Denver
I am not now, and never have been, a user of any controlled substances. However, like Judge John Kane, I am convinced that legalization of not only marijuana, but other controlled substances, is long overdue. The alleged War on Drugs, which has been waged during most of my lifetime, has been a colossal failure, in no small part because extremely powerful interests in this country have found it to be enormously profitable and would suffer from legalization.
Whereas we all know the degree to which government at all levels was corrupted by Prohibition and the consequent power of bootleggers, we somehow fail to grasp that the same systemic forces have resulted in an even greater degree of corruption of this country's governance than was ever imagined, or possible, in the 1920s. The nihilism of our age ensures that far more "respectable" people will play ball with organized crime than would have in the relatively more principled days of the early twentieth century, when there was still such a thing as shame among the ruling classes.
Mark Brennan
Centennial
"The Pot's the Point," Patricia Calhoun, November 26
I know that Patricia Calhoun's list of ten ways to tell if you're "in a significant relationship with your primary caregiver" was supposed to be funny, but it also made a very important, serious point: What medical marijuana patients need from their caregivers is medical marijuana. For state officials to try to come up with any other definition — they must be high!
Randy Myers
Boulder
"YummY!" Juliet Wittman, November 19
I am very disappointed in your review of Fully Committed. I saw this play in New York eleven years ago, and the production here at the Fox that Terry Dodd did five years ago — both excellent. You overlook the director and do not mention the author, and you demean the play as "lightweight" — yet you write about all the characters that Steven Burge portrays so excellently, making it a complex part with lots of meat written into it for both the director and actor to play with.
Paull Kupler
Denver