Letter to the Editor: Vote Yes on Measure 3

As parents and grandparents, we want our children to be safe from harm. We do not want them to use alcohol, tobacco or marijuana. However, we are not naive; we know that some of our children will make bad choices. Tobacco and alcohol are manufactured and sold by ethical businesses who must meet certain standards before they can be offered to the public. Prohibited products like marijuana are not subject to those same standards therefore, our children are at risk for death, imprisonment or impaired bodies and minds. 

Imagine your grandmother, 80 years old, going to a street corner to buy Prilosec and Xanax from a 19-year-old who offers the two drugs in a crumpled plastic bag with no markings, labels or dosage amounts and handles it all with dirty hands. This is the type of dealer your kids will buy their prohibited drugs from.

Children can access marijuana anywhere because it is not sold in stores -- it is sold on street corners and in schools.

The seller has no obligation to prove dose or sanitation. The seller does not care how old the customer is. The quantity of the dose is unknown. The quality of the produce is unknown. The cleanliness of the product is unknown.

When a child approaches a seller for marijuana, the seller would rather sell something highly addictive so that the customer comes back more often. The seller will typically have other drugs to offer including methamphetamines, heroin, cocaine, speed and various legal drugs like Valium or Ativan. Therefore, marijuana is a gateway drug to other illegal drugs as long as it remains illegal.

Let’s say that, regrettably, your child does make an error and buys an illegal drug. If your child is one of the unlucky ones to be caught by law enforcement, the penalty is to be locked in a cage as punishment. Under current law, your child will have a felony status permanently attached to his name which will make future employment very difficult.

Because marijuana is illegal, when a problem occurs the child is likely to be deceptive instead of helpful.

Marijuana can be a stimulant while alcohol is a depressant, therefore the stimulation is entirely different. Studies show that someone high on marijuana will drive slowly and carefully. The influence of alcohol typically causes more aggression and reckless driver behavior.

Marijuana has never killed anyone by consuming too much.

After legalization, most users will never smoke it again. Prohibition only offers marijuana in dry, smokable form. The free market offers marijuana as in alternative forms such as capsules, edible products, a transdermal patch, vapor oils, topical ointment, etc.

For thousands of years, the human race has used marijuana as a medicine. There are thousands of receptors in the human body ready to incorporate its use. Artificial drugs have no receptors in the human body, therefore pharmaceutical drugs can have bizarre and upsetting symptoms.

The drug trade has long been a source of income for organized crime. But now that four states have legalized marijuana, domestic product is beating imported marijuana in both price and quality. Mexican farmers growing for the vicious violent drug cartels have seen their returns drop from $100 per kilo to under $25. Legalization isn’t going to put the cartels out of business—they’re criminals who will turn to other crimes for their funding. But we can take from them the market for the most widely-used drug and shrink their customer base substantially. Here’s another way to look at it: Why should we continue to give business opportunities to violent criminals who don’t pay taxes and follow no regulations?

For these reasons, I encourage you to vote Yes on Measure #3 to make marijuana legal in North Dakota.

Marty Riske, Fargo N.D.