Look at what I just found

[Just Googled my name and found a Letter to Editor I wrote that ran in the SF Examiner in 1998 re medical marijuana activist Dennis Peron running for Governor, and that Republicans are  not real capitalists if they do not embrace the burgeoning marijuana industry for what it could do for the California economy.  Published 4:00 am, Thursday, January 8, 1998.]

Lungren's put-down of GOP rival Dennis Peron fails test - Attorney General Dan Lungren makes fun of Dennis Peron running for governor as a Republican, saying Peron "has smoked more marijuana than even I thought."

The truth is Lungren is abandoning Republican principles with his threat to close once again the cannabis buyers clubs. Marijuana is a product. Peron and the buyers clubs are meeting a market demand. Lungren is using the power of the state to prevent an industry from developing and to keep California capitalists from developing a product that is in high demand.

What kind of a Republican would do that?

Peron is running against Lungren in the June Republican primary. Anyone can cross over [party lines] to vote for him. Lungren feels threatened, and so lashes out with invective and innuendo.

Lungren needs to take another look at the potential in the marijuana business. The entire region of Northern California would boom if the state allowed its residents to develop this cash crop that is in high demand all over the world. We have the Wine Country in Napa / Sonoma. Why can't we have the Marijuana Country in Humboldt / Mendocino?

I thought Republicans believed in capitalism.

To twist Lungren's own invective back on him: He must be drinking too much liquor. He's not alert enough to see a thriving industry that would bring the equivalent of a gold rush to a depressed region in his own state.

He's reacting with resentment against his own delusion that people using medical marijuana are just "getting stoned" like hippies 20 years ago - just the way alcoholics hold onto old resentments.

Peron is the real Republican running in the June primary for governor. Lungren wants to call out a militia-like police force to keep sick people from getting their medicine at Peron's club. Sounds more like a Nazi - or at least a Communist - than a Republican. 

Kay Ebeling, San Francisco

LTE published 1998 re med mj as a Republican issue is online here:

http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/LETTERS-TO-THE-EDITOR-3111091.php

Told you I was a Republican. I'm more of a Socialist Republican.
Hmm.

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