Access for all
Access for all
I have been following the situation surrounding the Thirty Meter Telescope in the news and by talking with a variety of people. In the course of my work, I talk with Native Hawaiians, business people and other Hawaii residents every day.
In general, I believe most people, myself included, respect the rights of the protesters to peacefully assemble and voice their opinions. However, I am concerned for the rights and safety of other people who want to access the mountain. Blocking the road and creating a hazard with rocks does not help their image or their cause.
Restricting the rights of other people to access the mountain, and creating a safety hazard with rocks, is not a peaceful protest. It is illegal and dangerous. It reflects poorly on the protesters and entire state that visitors to Hawaii, residents, and also people working on the mountain (visitors station and other telescopes) are threatened by the idea of going to the mountain.
I ask the protesters to respect the rights of others, the same way they want their rights to be respected. I also ask the state to enforce the legal rights of all the people to access the mountain.
Reid E. Choate
Hilo
A ‘wonderful’ herb
Police Chief Harry Kubojiri (Tribune-Herald, July 4) is misguided. Medical clinical sciences long ago dispelled that cannabis in any amount is “addictive,” and his assertion in his April 6 letter to the state Senate … that cannabis “will lead to severe addiction” is a public disservice.
Hopefully, he made this statement from ignorance, and not with other agendas in mind. Indeed, some youths who have not yet developed well-formed and mature personalities can develop dependence. “Dependence” is a psychological condition and is not “addiction,” which is a condition beset with cravings, withdrawals and antisocial activities attendant with addictive substances. It is as much a responsibility for parents to thwart teenage use of cannabis as it is for them to prevent tobacco and alcohol use.
The chief’s opinion about the amounts of cannabis useful for medical conditions is faulty, but not surprising coming from one who is not medically trained. Medicinal cannabis has wonderful healing properties bereft of injurious side effects, as the world medical literature reports, and which benefits are known to tens of thousands of medical scientists and doctors. Amounts of medicinal cannabis useful to treat severe chronic pain are many times the amounts contemplated by the new law, which appears to have been enacted absent input from unprejudiced and knowledgeable physicians.
Concentrated cannabis trichomes (hashish), oils and tinctures efficacious for pain, seizures and other chronic degenerative disorders require significantly more than the 4 ounces per month that the chief seems to recommend.
Perhaps the chief’s level of knowledge is limited to observation of “street” levels of usage, whereby people smoke a 1- to 2-gram “joint” to relax mind and muscles at the end of the day after working at demanding, anxiety-provoking and backbreaking jobs.
Someday, when the federal government finally and fully recognizes the medical efficacy of cannabis, then physicians who are knowledgeable in the clinical medical sciences will be able to properly prescribe, rather than merely “recommend,” this wonderful medicinal herb.
Laurence E. Badgley, M.D.
Kurtistown