SPECTRUM: Is the Valley a safe place to raise our kids? B-1 vote provides an answer

The claim that store-front marijuana sales will not get into the hands of youth is laughable except for the deadly result of that certainty. Both the legal drugs found in tobacco and alcohol cannot be kept from youth no matter the present laws restricting their use to “adults.” The same will be true when pot stores are scattered around like alcohol and tobacco outlets. Follow the cops around on any Friday evening so see the reality of communal disaster at play in our youth because of the river of “adult only” alcohol. The claim that we should add easily available pot to the addictive mix in the community because it is less damaging than alcohol is like saying it should be OK to drop rattlesnakes into the living room since king cobras are already there.

Another outright deception is their claim that the pot crowd wants to “come into the light” and receive government regulation - after something more than 40 years of illegal sales to every addict customer possible. They will no more suddenly become upstanding law-abiding citizens than the addicts they cultivate will suddenly become un-addicted when law mandates them to sobriety in prison.

Moreover, the broad commercial availability of pot will not eliminate the “black market” for the drug any more than free methadone eliminates the market for heroin. If commercial activities are not banned by the vote, the price point and profitability will change - for both the street dealer and the elite few commercial brokers who survive the serious education they will get when they have to function in any real business environment. But the underground market will not go away because it will always and obviously be profitable for the same law-ignoring crowd presently using and selling.

The recent Frontiersman article by a “doctor” claiming that broad commercial marijuana activities are needed for the small group of folks needing medical marijuana may example the pinnacle of the deception presently in play. Anyone, even the classic memory-challenged pot-head, can, in a fifteen-second Google search, find the State of Alaska Department of Health and Social Services form for requesting legal medical marijuana. The scope of that availability is sufficiently broad that no one with anything approximating a legitimate need for medical marijuana can be denied the right to get it. I do not mind be blunt on this one. The claim that broad commercial marijuana sales are essential to medical care is outright lie by the pot enthusiasts - because they know better. That is also true of the claim that pot sales will get us a wonderful corporate bankroll of vice taxes.

That is patently false since all studies show the real dollar costs of these substances to us as individuals and a society are many times greater than any supposed tax gain. It matters little if you can pave more roads when medical costs from addictive choices escalate through the roof and the drug crowd has no means to pay for the health care they will require so the rest of us have to pay it.

Finally, the pot crowd is indeed foolishly invested over their head in their greed-driven dream of wealth by selling pot. Since the dollars in play cannot flow in normal legal patterns even now, we do not know the millions already investing in the “opportunity” of commercial pot in the Valley. But the fact that people already making poor choices regarding the prioritization of a high then choose to make poor investment choices cannot become determinative in wise choices for the rest of us. Our opportunity to vote “Yes” on Ballot Measure 1, and thus avoid creating more addicts, will indeed be costly to those who care nothing about the destructive results of their pot preference. However, the generations of youth at risk of an early slide into addiction because marijuana brownies could soon circulate the Jr. High playgrounds of the Valley may well thank those voters with the wisdom to ban commercial pot activities in the Valley.

So, to the original question - is the pot lawsuit against the Borough and some concerned Christian citizens dead? If honest caring citizens get to the polls on Tuesday and vote “Yes” on Ballot Measure 1 to the avoidance of more addictive influence in our community, then, no it is not. The lawsuit will certainly be resurrected. Without question, the pot crowd cares intensely for their high and the profits of selling that high. The question about how much the rest of us care for a safe place to raise our kids will also be answered Tuesday.