Legalizing marijuana would not be a good thing for Idaho

This morning I received in the mail my weekly copy of The Herald and was reading the editorial page of your paper when I saw Mike Oehler’s letter about County Commissioner Ron Smith.

I don't know Mr. Oehler or Mr. Smith, but after reading what Oehler says about the marijuana laws in many of the other more "enlightened" western states and their marijuana laws, I really had to laugh.

My wife and I own a home in Boundary County, and we plan to retire there in a few years.

I was born and raised in the state of California and have served as a police officer in a large southern California county for the last 28 years. The voters of my "progressive" state voted to allow medical marijuana more than 10 years ago and it has been an absolute mess with predictable results ever since.

Pot is grown by every dirt bag and doper around for profit, and when they are stopped by the police, they fall back on the medicinal purposes argument, which is rarely the case.

We have Mexican pot growers lurking in our forests doing illegal grows, making it dangerous to go hiking in our own mountains. We have foreign nationals renting homes and placing hydroponic pot farms in the homes to grow pot illegally, endangering neighbors due to the high drug activity.

The federal government routinely raids the medical marijuana storefronts in our big cities because state law conflicts with federal law. Cops hate this law and so do the district attorneys who have to muddle through the mess.

Rarely do we see the suffering cancer patient using marijuana for their pain. It’s usually a 20-year-old kid who says he's smoking it for a stiff neck, back injury or just life itself. The law is a joke.

One of the reasons my wife and I picked Boundary County, Idaho, for our future home was to get away from everything that California has become. Believe me. . . there is nothing down here that you want or want to make your beautiful state like.

Please take it from someone who has seen this bad law up close and personal. You don't want these same problems in Idaho and on this matter, I believe Mr. Oehler is quite wrong. To legalize dope is to turn your back on evil and pretend its not there.

Robert Boone

Wrightwood, Calif.