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DEAR ELLEN FORNEY: My students have recently completed their letters to you. As a class, we strongly believe in the core principles of the freedoms of speech and press. The sixth-grade students in room 9 at Bow Lake Elementary value those freedoms. At the same time, we also value productive freedom of press and speech. We ask our children to steer away from things like drugs, alcohol, and other choices that lead to negative experiences. So why, then, do adults write articles ["How D'ya Smoke Pot and Stay Out of Jail??" comic by Ellen Forney, Sept 27] informing people how to use drugs without getting caught? My students and I just couldn't figure out why someone would write an article supporting the use of illegal drugs.
We all know that many are already addicted to alcohol, prescription medications, and illegal drugs. Plenty of others are fighting other addictions, to alcohol and other drugs.
Stranger Personals
So why encourage the use of pot, Ellen? We just didn't think it was a productive use of free speech and press. We think it's not responsible to write articles encouraging folks to use pot and get away with it.
Jason J. Dodge, teacher of the wonderful kids in room 9 at Bow Lake Elementary School, SeaTac
[Ed. note: We were unable to print all of the students' letters due to space constraints.]
DEAR ELLEN FORNEY: What is your purpose? Are you trying to make people get addicted to smoking so that they can get addicted and later on "die"! I think that you should stop writing such nonsense. I don't think you would want to ruin the next generation's kids. If you wrote this in a different country, you would get your hands cut off and be sent to jail forever.
A Concerned Sixth-Grader
IF YOU KEEP writing this article lots of people will get addicted to drugs. Lots of kids like looking at comics and if you keep writing this article kids will use drugs too. If you don't stop we will have to write to you again.
Ken, a Sixth-Grader
MY TEACHER HAS brought in a newspaper a couple weeks ago. I don't think it is appropriate to help people who smoke pot to get away with it. If you keep writing articles like that the people who smoke pot will start to increase just by your unacceptable article. I don't think you should do this again.
Krystelle
WHY IN THE FIRST place are you writing an article "How to Smoke Pot and Get Away With It." That is so stupid. I'm not trying to be rude.
Tierre
WHAT WERE YOU thinking? I mean, it's bad enough that so many people do drugs in America but you are encouraging it! You know that kids love to read comics and I don't think that you should have the right to freedom of the press you should have the right to remain silent in this instance. No offense.
Artem
I FELT VERY worried. When I saw your article on how to smoke pot and get away with it. Like when you smoke it in the backyard and leave the door closed. When the house reek of pot. I am a sixth grader and I do not want to grow up and smoke pot.
PJ
IF KIDS START reading this and think drugs are cool they'll start doing drugs and get into a lot of trouble and it'll be all your fault. You don't even care about peoples futures. You're just a cruel person. Just stop writing this stuff please. That's all I'm asking for.
Marjot KharbandaP.S. My last name is an Indian name.
DEAR EDITOR OF THE STRANGER: Not trying to be mean, but writing that article was a big mistake and kids might read that and smoke pot. Well here's a idea why don't [you] write a different nice interesting article and when they read it they forget all about smoking pot.
Joshua
IT'S BAD ENOUGH that people in the world already smoke drugs, and now a lot of people will start doing drugs now that they can get away with it. I mean if you had a child in 6th grade, and you send him/her to get a newspaper and finds the article you wrote. Don't you think it would change his opinion on drugs.
You know what would have been better than writing how to smoke drugs and get away with it. Would be, if you wrote how to tell if your friends, families, etc. were doing drugs. I'm not trying to be rude, but maybe you could write something to tell people that they shouldn't listen to your article. You don't have to if you don't want to it's just a suggestion. And I'm not saying your a bad writer or that you don't care about anyone but yourself, it's just what you wrote.
Sammy
YOU SEEM TO be a creative person, but you should put your creativeness for better use than one for people encouraging them to do drugs. I hope that it will make [you] think about what your writing about, if not you will hear from me again.
The Next Generation, Esayas
DO YOU KNOW that drugs can take away 20 or 30 years of your life. Also they can kill you or can become high and drive and kill other people, and they can become addicted.
I hope that you didn't give that to a young teenager because I see kids that are only in middle school and they are smoking. I am not going to write any more because I'm so disgusted. What were you thinking?
NicoleP.S. We are way smarter then you think we are.
DEAR ELLEN: I am going to break it down to you right quick, and tell you what I think. I think it is a poor use of your god given talent to write. Yesterday, I saw a paper that said that Whitney Houston was dying because of drug use. Her husband Bobby Brown is messed up too. Jason Williams for the Vancouver Grizzlies (NBA) got kicked out of college for possession of Marijuana. Now your add is shattering young generations dreams of becoming a football, basketball, soccer, rugby, secretary, poet, actor/actress, singer, dancer, or even "the president of the United States," but they started to use drugs and they got messed and now we can see them on the streets smoking pot, but they could of made something of themself, but they got messed up.
Future Football Star
YOUR MESSAGE WAS unclear because I was concerned. Your message was fuzzy and I think it wasn't nice. You see, other people probably are concerned, I hope, about your article. I hope others write to you that they are concerned about your writing.
A Concerned StudentWHAT IS YOUR purpose of writing this? I think about this article that is bad because it is helping people how to pot smoke but I think it's bad to pot smoke. When you read this letter I hope you stop writing articles that we don't have to read to that helps you get away and did you ever think that some kids like to look around the newspaper or read articles like comics or something else. I'm think that you know parents care for their children but you just wanted to write something good but it wasn't good. So when you read this I hope you stop writing bad article that can help people to get away from something.
Josh, a Sixth-Grader
YOU HAVE FREEDOM of press but this article went too far.
We both know at least 26 people who don't think that this article is funny. In fact we bet that only a small percentage of people think the article is even funny. Another fact is that we despise this article. Basically we want to know why you let this article get printed in the first place. Please write back?
Amy
ELLEN FORNEY RESPONDS: KIDS--Thanks for your letters. I agree. Marijuana is not for kids. JASON--What were you thinking, bringing my comic into your classroom? It was intended for adults, and published in a paper for adults. Millions of tax-paying, flag-waving citizens enjoy a joint now and then, many find pot's medicinal qualities invaluable, and many fight hard for its legalization. www.NORML.org has plenty of information on their site; check it out.
Best,
Ellen Forney
DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS
In our November 8 issue, the photo for "Domestic Front" by Amy Jenniges was taken by Fel Pajimula. And in our November 10 issue, the photo of the Paradox Theater in the Club Directory was taken by Annie Marie Musselman. We regret both photo credit errors.
Commenting was not available when this article was originally published.
every single response from your students sounds like something someone that blindly believes everything they hear on TV would say, and it's due to uneducated 'teachers' such as yourself that are causing us to pump out a society of idiot sheeple.
Have a good day kids.
Who is to say what a positive experience is versus a negative experience? My experiences with marijuana have been anything but negative. But hey, who cares what I think, let us allow this teacher to continue brainwashing her class with her personal feelings, interpretations, and prejudices. Never mind the benefits of marijuana, the social destruction that is a direct consequence of the war on drugs or that statistically over half of her class will smoke cannabis within the next decade regardless of their opinions on the matter at such a young age.
You want to teach children about drugs? Tell the facts. Let them know what will kill them. Tell them what is addictive. Tell them what the effects are. There is nothing wrong with drug use, hell most people wake up and do 'caffeine' (a legal stimulant in most areas of the world). The problem is what some people do while they're under the influence, and that is not a problem we're anywhere close to solving because simply saying "this is illegal" is the bollix solution most people are content with.
Wake up America your kids will experiment no matter what and the safe bet is POT!!
The Pot propaganda from the pre-60's generation is ALL fear based and driven.....for money and power.
Dear Ellen,
My Daddy used to smoke pot and now he's dead. It's your fault. Why do you hate Jesus?
Love Billy.
Classic case of Good ol Fashion Public School Brain Washin...
I am 58 years older than your students, and I want you to know that the anti-marijuana propaganda forced upon me and my classmates in high school actually prompted me to immediately seek out pot, and I have enjoyed it ever since. I never became a hard drug user, never smoked cigarettes, and drink only an occasional glass of wine. I have never been in trouble with the law, and am now retired from a long and productive career. Neither my health nor my cognitive functions have suffered. Get over it!
Teach children to think, not to parrot government dogma. They are smarter than you think, grammar and syntax to the contrary, and have already seen through you.
Everyone seems to be disgusted that these children are being 'brainwashed' to have a strong opinion on an issue. The reasoning appears to be that these kids don't know anything about pot and that there's no voice in their classroom to cry out in support of the plant.
Personally, I agree; it's creepy how similar most of these children's submissions are. I can recreate in my head exactly what the teacher's lesson must have been by examining the parallels in all these sixth grade arguments. This system clearly isn't grounds for healthy debate. It's just a spawning ground for a classroom's headcount of votes all in the same direction. The uniformity is startling. But as the page continues, the reader passes the children's notes and gets to the viewer comments. Notice anything?
Logically, most people posting comments must have enjoyed the comic an awful lot to read the letters to the editor. Further, most people who like this comic support legalization, or at least the underminement of higher authority. Basically, everyone who posted must have been a stoner or a punk. And what do all these stoners and punks say?
THE EXACT SAME THING.
I don't think one person stopped to apply their advice to themselves. Remove the issue from the issue. Pretend like this isn't about pot. It's just an argument, you can join the red team or the blue team. The irony is three-fold.
First, an influential person reads propoganda with the potential to sway people towards redness. In response, the offended person mobilizes a small, blue army of brainless zealots to assail the author of the propoganda, for the crime of propoganda, by use of propoganda. The teacher isn't morally superior to the author at this point, but the teacher does have a stronger influence over his/her specific demographic. In response, the reds who were successfully swayed by the original propoganda lash out against the blue teacher, for the crime of irreversibly damaging the value of these children by aligning them in the opposite way. With the final word, red team claims victory.
So perhaps, at the end of the day, the red team won by virtue of having stronger militants. It's not surprising that fully grown (likely stoned) adults can cohere ideas into stronger arguments than a unified group of middle schoolers. But was anything solved?
Not a single child stepped back and asked, how is this bad? No child questioned the misinformation s/he was given, nor did they question the assumption that the author had immoral motives. Not one kid presented himself as the savior of the human race, the unboxed thinker who hesitates to align in an issue, in favor of sitting back and gaining perspective by comparing both sides. At least, not that the the author showed (and I feel that she would have proudly displayed this letter, if she received it).
But in the crowd of "enlightened" non-sheeple, the stoners and punks with the life experience in excess of 58 years (in at least one case), was there a single redeeming human? Did anyone step back and think, as crazy as it sounds, that perhaps the teacher was morally justified in protecting the bubble of ignorance in which the children existed, having never known for themselves the supposed evils of the drug world? You can't unlearn experience, and perhaps children are best fearing substances with which they needn't associate until they're older, anyway. Perhaps they really aren't old enough to smoke until they do question their teachings. And what better way prevent a kid from snooping around the closet where the presents are hidden than to frighten them with tales of a child-hungry boogeymonster?
Now, I'm ill-equipped to lead humanity to salvation. I'll throw that right out there. It should be no Herculean task to shred my alternate perspective to pieces in favor of the more commonly accepted norm. But can't anyone see the importance of mounting a defense for the underdog, no matter how unlikely victory may be? What kind of debate demonizes and demolishes the other perspective to the point of being inconceivable? How can truth be extracted from one unchallenged notion? It's the heat of the argument that turns coalish theories into diamond-hard truths.
Just as an occasional serving of Alcohol, the occasional dose of Acetaminophen or certain opioid based substances (natural or synthetic) may have therapeutic effects while over use of ANY of these substances can have serious deleterious effects upon said human organisms (try downing a bottle of Tylenol and see how long your liver stays alive).
What is at issue here is truly a basic human right and one (I believe)guaranteed under the US Constitution: the right to choose whether or not to consume certain substances in manners which do not harm others: the crime of marijuana consumption is truly a victimless crime as such.
What right does a school teacher have to preach "abstinence" EXCEPT as a civic lesson such as "don't get caught - processing through the US legal system may be hazardous to your health"
I think Jason J. Dodge, got wrapped up in his own premise and missed the point.
Also...it really irritates me when people use drug addiction as a reason for pot to be illegal. Whatever Whitney Houston is on, it's not pot. and she's not on it because she smoked pot, she's on it because being as famous as she is would screw anyone up and drugs are a release.
There are so many other things wrong with all of this that I would love to point out but I feel like I at least got something out and this whole comment could be just a bit more articulate. Oh and I also would like to say that I definitely would have been one of the letter writers in 6th grade so maybe there is hope for them yet.
Ridiculous though I feel addressing you as such, I appreciate the sentiment of your argument. The hardening effect of heated argument is precisely why I avoid internet chat boards, but your argument blew past the petty details of marijuana consumption and touched on something far more relevant - the inherently oppressive nature of untempered rhetoric.
That being said, the instructor voluntarily brought in this comic and shaped his student's understanding thereof. We non-sheeple would expect those in charge of molding our children to do so in a responsible way. I agree that some veneer of ignorance is necessary, but, as referenced before, it could push kids into trying pot at too early an age.
To the teacher of these kids, you are in the wrong profession, run for senate and if these kids are as smart as you think they are tell them the truth and let them decide for themselves. Everyone has a vice, including you, whether its smoking pot, eating your feelings, or using your position of power to change the way people perceive their world with LIES
Sixth grade teacher: What the hell is wrong with you? Who the hell hired you? What school do you "teach" at?
All this I'd like to know, so on the unfortunate off-chance that my child is forced to attend your school, I know exactly who to tell him/her to avoid. And to throw spaghetti and meatballs at.
ps loved the article
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