Messages About Drugs

Re “Ventura Residents Say Ad Tarnishes Their Image,” April 1.

Little do the protesters know, but all their ranting and raving about a marijuana leaf on a billboard is precisely why it needs to be there. We suffer from a lack of education on cannabis (hemp and marijuana) and, in turn, are afraid of what we do not understand.

Unfortunately, we’re obsessed with drug messages. Take the California Bureau of Health and Welfare’s new anti-cigar ad campaign. We all know cigars are a health hazard, so why do we need to be bombarded with messages about it?

Why must we create a public stigma against everything that may be hazardous to one’s health? Let’s educate about drugs and leave it at that.

The cannabis leaf billboard is reaching the most absurd limits of this message hysteria. The billboard is advertising hemp, an environmentally friendly resource that can produce rope, paper, fuel, oils, food, clothing and literally thousands of other useful products. But, at the first sight of a cannabis leaf, people freak out, screaming that we are sending the wrong message about marijuana use. Such “reefer madness” is precisely the reason hemp has been banned in this country for the past 60 years. It is also the reason we are still in need of such education.

Drug messages are not only worthless, they’re damaging. If we were to promote proper drug education, we would see there is no merit or need in attacking hemp billboards or glamorizing the famous egghead who said, “This is your brain on drugs.”

JOEL W. JOHNSON

San Jose