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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (April 7, 2016)
LET TERS businesses is a lousy way to grow the economy? In short, Clark is right on. Employees need to make a decent living. So do employers. Really, we’re on the same side. Let’s have solutions that work for all of us. Personally, I’d change the tax code. Michael Sussman Eugene IT’S TRUE I agree with Ben Ricker; it is much easier to find a group to get drunk within Eugene than Springfield. They even have an area dedicated to the inebriated called the Fermentation District. A great place to get soused but who wants to live there? Norman Bellitt Springfield POT OIL DANGERS Marijuana (cannabis) is a medicine. Edibles, tinctures, creams and oils are potent medicines and should be recommended by a physician who understands their properties and side effects. Allowing people to get anything they want at a dispensary is the same as allowing them to go to a pharmacy and get medicine without seeing a doctor or a pharmacist. Our bodies, just like the cannabis plant, make cannabinoids (major ingredients) and we have receptors for them everywhere including the brain, blood system, liver, lungs, ovaries, kidneys, etc. The cannabinoids in marijuana are very therapeutic. Getting high is a side effect of cannabis. Historically it was used by the plant to protect itself from animals that liked to eat its leaves but would go to sleep when intoxicated. Most of my patients do not like to get high and have learned to adjust the dose so that the psychoactive effects are minimal. They use marijuana because of its remarkable medicinal properties (pain, nausea, appetite, seizures, anxiety, depression, Alzheimer’s, neuropathies, PTSD, cancer). Like all medicines, marijuana can be dangerous for patients who have not been educated in its appropriate use and have not seen a physician. The risks are particularly high for seniors and mid-lifers: heart attack (tachycardia or rapid heart rate); stroke (increased blood pressure); losing consciousness (lowered blood pressure); fractures secondary to falls (poor motor control); bleeding internally (may interfere with blood thinners); psychotic episodes (predisposed or using large amount of oil); children becoming intoxicated with edibles (concentration unreliable). You have a moral and legal obligation to protect the citizens of Oregon. Please use your God-given privilege of serving others to promote what is right and honorable. Keep medical marijuana as a separate entity and do not legalize the purchase of edibles, tinctures, creams and oils without a doctor’s recommendation. Do not cater to those who think that money is more important than human lives. Also please save our small farmers. Dr. Judy Emanuel D.O. Ashland 6 A pril 7, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com CALORIE COUNTING Some recent letters regarding “fat shaming” all seem to have the same original source, that being the Feb. 11 EW story “Big Love.” And, though several subjects have been covered, none have hit the center. The laws of physics and biology are simple: If a person consumes more energy (measured in calories) than he burns, he will gain weight. It doesn’t matter if the food is paleo or Mediterranean; some will have it easy and some will have it difficult, but the equation is still the same. And if a person wishes to consume more than they burn, I do not care. It’s their life — until they are in my health insurance pool, in which case I would prefer they were not because the medical issues surrounding obesity are numerous, unavoidable and expensive. Therefore, in the same way that ObamaCare handles smokers, why not the same with obesity? Grant Roberts Corvallis BLOODY CLINTON Is that blood dripping from the American flag wrapped around Hillary Clinton on the cover of your March 24 edition? If not, it should be. I wonder if any of Hillary Clinton’s supporters has ever taken the time to figure out the death count in Libya since NATO — Hillary and the West’s military Leviathan — destroyed that country and murdered Gaddafi. Hillary’s deep political analysis after the fact? “We came, we saw, he died. Yuk, Yuk, Yuk.” And what about the shenanigans at the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi when Hillary was secretary of state? Let me give you a hint: There neither is nor ever was a U.S. Embassy in Benghazi. But don’t tell Hillary. It might mess up her narrative. Over one million dead in Iraq as a result of the greatest terrorist attack (by the U.S. military) in history. Yep, Hillary supported that war. She supported the illegal military coup in Honduras in 2009 and is now all for sending (with due process, of course) the Honduran refugees fleeing that violent military establishment back to their miserable fates in their native country. (After all, it’s all “For the Children.”) Dead teenagers with crushed skulls and stab wounds in Mena, Arkansas, back in the day when the Clintons occupied the governor’s mansion and the CIA was running drugs through the Mena airport; Whitewater and The Arkansas Development and Finance Authority, the Rose Law Firm and Tyson Foods; Travelgate; “The Strange Case of Vincent Foster” (go ahead — read the book); strong-arming the female victim’s of Bill’s “imbroglios”; unequivocally supporting Israel while the Israeli state slaughters Palestinian women and children; the current email scandal; the list goes on and on and on (see arkancide.com). I suppose, given the above, Hillary Clinton does deserve to be the chief executive of what is rapidly becoming the bizarre goat rodeo people call the United States of America. Some of us, however, have a better idea: Hillary for prison 2016. Steve Johnston Creswell Ted’s Great Adventure FINAL OBSERVATIONS FROM A LONGTIME EDITOR-IN-CHIEF T his issue begins a new era in Eugene Weekly newsroom management as I turn over the editor’s desk to my able colleague Camilla Mortensen. It should be a smooth transition. Camilla has been on staff since March 2007 and knows the community and region well. She has been invaluable as reporter, news editor and associate editor while writing award-winning investigative stories that have made EW one of the leading environmental voices in the Northwest. She has unique qualifications — a Ph.D. in comparative literature and folklore, an inquiring mind, strength of character, organizational chops, a sharp sense of humor — qualities that will help carry this paper on to the next level. I arrived at EW in 1998 after 15 years of editing daily and weekly newspapers around Oregon. My wife Julia and I were living and working in the Ashland area and needing to move closer to my aging parents in Yachats. The Weekly was looking for a new editor. I’m an old Duck (1967) and my brother and his wife live in Eugene so it seemed like a good fit. The EW owners took a chance on me and I’m grateful. I’ve been engaged in a nearly 18-year conversation with our community, shedding light on the evolving issues that affect our lives. Quite an adventure! The conventional newspapers I once edited have all shriveled. But EW since 1998 has gone from printing 30,000 papers a week to 42,500. Revenues have also grown at a similar rate. Our unusual success is due to a collaborative effort by the owners and staff to hire, train and support the most dynamic people we can find in writing, editing, design, photography, website development, sales, financial management, distribution and customer service. The talent pool in this valley is stunning. People who have joined us have, in turn, taught us a lot. Our internship program has expanded our diversity and given dozens of young writers and photographers a big step up in their career paths. We appreciate The Register-Guard and other local media, but so much content and readership has been lost over the years, and much of the remaining content, with some exceptions, seems superficial and predictable. Our mission has been to fill in the gaps, go deeper on the issues and provide a much-needed progressive voice — and make it all available for free! Not everything we print is award-worthy, of course. We suffer from the usual human failings. But year after year we have published courageous, relevant, insightful and sometimes outrageous content (such as last week’s satire issue), information that our readers can’t find anywhere else. And our content has been enriched immeasurably by thousands of letters to the editor, commentaries and personal conversations with our readers. We admit our biases and that is rare in journalism today. It’s OK to advocate for environmental sanity, visionary urban planning, transparency in government, public engagement, more funding for education, better policing, unfettered artistic expression, housing the homeless and seeking justice for the oppressed. And it’s OK to poke and ridicule the absurdities and hypocrisies that surround us. I will miss a lot in addition to being surrounded by remarkable people at work and in the community. I will miss knowing about how our content comes to be. Everything you see or read in the Weekly goes through a fascinating process from conception to print. Every photo has a hidden context, every news story or feature has a story behind it. Even the Weekly’s ads and red box locations have back-stories. Sometimes the elements of our paper come together smoothly, other times awkwardly or painfully, and occasionally this work has been downright hilarious. As the late Molly Ivins once said, Keep fighting for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be courageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. — Ted Taylor
