Keep marijuana sales the way they are 

There is currently a concerted effort to take marijuana out of the hands of organized crime and place it under tight government regulation, and it goes by the name of Proposition 19. When I was young and still experimenting with consciousness-altering substances, I remember nothing being so easily obtainable as a $20 bag of high-grade cannabis. Of course, I knew older friends and those who went to the trouble of getting fake IDs in order to circumvent the law and get their trembling lips around a bottle of liquor, but I also saw them pay a high price in traffic fatalities, DUIs, and alcohol poisoning. So we bought and sold pot instead, with no need for valid ID, nor risk of hospitalization.

Now I fear that Proposition 19 will legalize marijuana, tax and regulate it like alcohol, and restrict its availability to designated licensed distributors. I would hate to see my children grow up in a world where alcohol was no harder to purchase than marijuana, and where they would be led to believe that the two are equally damaging, especially given that alcohol is responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths a year in this country, and that cannabis has never killed anyone.

So vote no on Proposition 19, and rest assured that youngsters will always have access to their sticky green bud through our ever-dependable network of criminal dealers who never turn away a paying customer based on age or hour of day.