Required reading
Apropos of the controversy surrounding booting medical marijuana use from Section 8 units, I just finished a riveting book that all people who care about this issue should read. Its title is “Marijuana is Safer: So Why Are We Driving People to Drink?” The well-supported thesis of this book is that alcohol causes far more social problems than pot. This is due to the biological effects of alcohol compared to the more benign biological effects of pot, not statistical comparisons of their usage rates.
Follow the money on this: The drug, alcohol, law enforcement and prison industries all benefit from incarcerating stoners. Keeping it illegal feeds criminal enterprises. As a nonuser, I have researched the issue and come to the conclusion that it’s past time for a reasonable approach to legalizing marijuana. Get this book and read it.
Abbie McMillen
Brooksville
Northeast Cardiology
I was disappointed to learn that Northeast Cardiology Associates relinquished its independent status to work for a local hospital.
It is regrettable that our health care system pays doctors substantially more when they see a patient in a very expensive hospital setting than a modest private office. This same office visit is much more costly to the patient, the insurer, the health care system and our country.
A private independent doctor treats the patient first, as he or she learned in training. Conversely, the hospital, which is a big business, must make a profit first and treat the patient second. A business’ medical decisionmaking usually differs from a doctor’s medical decisionmaking. A salaried doctor must follow directives established by the business owner.
Obamacare will worsen this problem by forcing doctors and health care providers to work in the more expensive settings in hospitals and government-funded programs. Private practice doctors will continue to disappear.
More patients will receive health care in a business setting, where profit is more important than providing the best patient care. One can only serve one master. I suggest there are much better and more efficient health care models than Obamacare.
Paul Shapero, M.D.
Bangor
Math mistake?
I don’t know whether to be concerned about our level of education, reporters’ veracity or being misled by our government. In the BDN news briefs on Oct. 17, I once again read the report that Social Security recipients will be getting a 1.7 percent increase in benefits next year, resulting in an “about $40 increase for an average $1,260 per month.”
My problem is simply that an increase from $1,220 to $1,260 ($40) is a 3.3 percent increase, not 1.7 percent. A 1.7 percent increase is only $20.74, not anywhere near close to $40. A lie or just a simple mistake?
Michael Smith
Southwest Harbor
Children’s safety
Can someone please tell me why there is so much opposition to creating “safe zones” in the city of Belfast? I watched the City Council meeting from Oct. 16, and my jaw hit the floor as I listened to these elected city officials question and at times berate Chief Michael McFadden about the area and proximity this measure would encompass.
The question is simply this: Do you want stiffer penalties for people who deal drugs within 1,000 feet of a school or park? Drug dealers prey on places such as schools, city parks and skate parks where kids congregate as a means of growing their “business” and creating repeat customers. Unfortunately, in the world we live in, this is going to happen regardless of whether you believe the war on drugs is working or not. Establishing “safe zones” ensures that when the dealers are caught, they will face harsher penalties. In fact, I am fine with someone caught dealing anywhere to face a stiff penalty.
For Councilor Roger Lee to say he is unable to vote on this measure until he sees a map to ensure it’s fair for people is an absolute travesty. There is no easy answer to the drug problem in our community, but refusing to put up a sign to establish boundaries for our children’s safety is definitely not the way to start.
Mandie Sawyer
Belfast
Show some sensitivity
I do not believe that the names and addresses of those people involved in the prostitution scandal is a newsworthy event. It is not a major crime. In fact, being charged as a john is the equivalent of getting a speeding ticket.
Do other offenders of similar low crimes have their names made so public? Of course not.
Printing the names of those people suspected of being involved should be a crime. By making these names very public, the newspaper may break up homes or cause the children of those charged the object of ridicule.
There is a feeling that this is a high moral crime and that the alleged johns deserve what’s coming to them. People who feel this way need to rethink their motivations. Should we next put these people into stocks and pelt them with rotten fruit? I don’t see the difference.
People who leave the alleged johns alone will show maturity and sensitivity.
Jon Greenberg
Westbrook
Peace candidate
When I read John Lennon’s words — “Give Peace a Chance” — in the headline of Kathleen Parker’s column ( BDN, Oct. 24), I mistakenly assumed she was writing about the recently departed and true champion of peace: Sen. George McGovern.
Upon further investigation, I realized that she was not referring to the brave man who stood up at the 1968 Democratic National Convention and pledged to begin his administration with an immediate end to the Vietnam War. No, she was naming Republican candidate Mitt Romney as a “peace candidate.”
Her rationale was that he used the word “peace” 12 times in the recent presidential debate. How does that make him a peace candidate? Romney also made the comment during the debate that, “We don’t dictate to nations, we free nations from dictators.” That reasoning has been the rationale behind many of our foreign policy blunders, including the Vietnam War. Freeing nations from dictators is not a peace stance.
Carol Rosinski
Ellsworth
A. McMillen, C. Rosinski: good letters.
Mr. Greenberg says: “Printing the names of those people suspected of being involved should be a crime. By making these names very public, the newspaper may break up homes or cause the children of those charged the object of ridicule.”
The First Amendment gives everyone the right to publish information in the public record — or even out of the public record in many cases.
Don’t blame the messengers, though, blame the men who chose to cheat on their wives, girlfriends, fiancees, and children. The news media most certainly didn’t force these men to cheat.
Last, quite a few newspapers do post the names of people accused of committing minor crimes, even civil crimes such as speeding.
So rape victims’ names should be released?
Is the rape victim the accused?
It’s all public record, but it is not released because of the impact of that release outweighs the public’s right to know.
Personally I don’t think they should release accused rapists names either, until they are convicted.
These men are not victims, they went to the club, and bought and illegal service. The men put their families at risk of humiliation A good man would never do that to his family, these men where selfish.
Until they are convicted, they haven’t *done* anything.
I don’t blame papers for printing the names of criminals. The morbid fascination with consensual sex between adults however (above other minor crimes), is a sign of a society whose priorities are a little out of whack.
The fact that consensual sex between adults is illegal, at best, is draconian. At worst, it is theocratic bullying like most “morality” laws.
J. Greenberg: Maybe they could be made to wear the “scarlet letter”.
Abbie- Good luck in your attempt to educate people about marijuana. Alcohol kills more people in one hour around the globe than marijuana has in all of recorded history. Half the people in America still think Reefer Madness was a documentary! LOL.
It’s a counter-productive policy. Legalizing marijuana would free up billions of dollars to put to good use in society and better yet is that it would reduce the strength of the Mexican cartels and make this country safer, not more dangerous.
If prostitution is a felony than engaging the services of a prostitute should be a felony. Why do we treat the women (and sometimes men) more harshly than teh men who engage those women? Without the johns there would be no prostitutes.
Totally agree
By that logic, a guy buying a dime bag should be punished the same as a drug dealer. Makes no sense. Those that supply the demand are the source of the crime.
That said, I think prostitution should be legal and this should be a moot point.
I have yet to see, or read about, men being pulled off the streets by prostitutes, forced to have sex with them and then forced to pay them for the sex (usually up front). Until that happens the johns should be treated wiht harsher penalties than the prostitutes.
Oh, I alsos believe that prostitution should be legal but until it is, the johns should face the same, if not harsher, penalties than the hookers.
What you’re suggesting might act as a deterrent, but it is not just.
There is a hierarchy.
John < Prostitute < Pimp < Human Traffickers < Organized Crime Boss
Drug User < Street Dealer < Distributor < Cartel Leader
Dr. Shapero . . I am 63 years old and the concept of universal health care has been debated my entire life . . President Obama actually made it happen!
The GOP has had over 60 years to address this issue of universal health care. But like their positions on Social Security . .Civil Rights . . Right of Women to Choose . . MediCare . .they OPPOSED these programs, even filibustering against Civil Rights legislation!
More than enough time as passed to come up with ” much better and more efficient health care models”.
Winston Churchill said it best: “American can always be counted on to do the right thing . . . after they have exhausted all other possibilities”!
FORWARD!
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 would not have passed were it not for the support of Republicans. It was the Democrats who fought the passage.
Goes to show, how much things can change. Also, those southern Democrats of the 50’s and 60’s, are now today’s tea party Republicans.
“The drug, alcohol, law enforcement and prison industries all benefit from incarcerating stoners.” Abbie – it’s all OUR money.
“Do other offenders of similar low crimes have their names made so public? Of course not.” Yes, Jon, they do. Those names are in the paper EVERY DAY.
Jon Greenberg, I can see that you are not really considering the possibility that the spouses or other sexual partners of the Johns might wish to know that they were in danger of contracting a STD from their formerly trusted partners. I do doubt that they had a hall pass to go visit a prostitute. If you were a wife or girlfriend of one of the Johns, woudn’t you want to have yourself checked out to insure that you hadn’t been given a STD?
Judging from the tenuous grasp on mathematics displayed by news agencies in general, the most challenging math course taken by journalists must be “MATH 100 – Number and how to write them”
Shapero – I highly doubt that the Doc’s at Northeast Cardiology feel ‘forced’ to work for the hospital. There are more factors to be considered when practicing medicine than money.