City Council shouldn’t miss boat on pot revenue again

Thank you Councilor Lynette Perry for revisiting Baker City’s ban on legal marijuana sales. I urge all of our council to reconsider. I wish to echo, and add to, Dan Collins’ recent letter, “City should reconsider ban on marijuana dispensaries.”

Are the citizens that are opposed to legal marijuana sales the same ones that helped overwhelmingly crush the school bond? Just asking — trying to get a handle on why Baker City feels it can throw any kind of revenue, whatsoever, out the window?

I am disappointed in our usually caring citizens! They would not even approve a medicinal outlet for a safe and non-addicting alternative to opioids, a remedy for epileptic seizures, glaucoma, Alzheimer’s, PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) … the list of proven and historical medicinal benefits of marijuana would take too many of my precious 350 words.

The headline of the Herald’s May 29 report on the City Council meeting “Residents say pot ban should stay” was totally misleading and manipulative, especially when only “three” residents are mentioned? Possibly those were the only three quoted out of a huge unexpected crowd of like-minded souls?

I’m unsure why Mr. Hunsaker feels so strongly that it would not be worth it for the Council to reconsider the ban? My thought is that any kind of (and always needed) revenue would be well worth a reconsideration. Alice Knapp and Marvin Sundean want to mistakenly connect, or lump together, marijuana and opioids (in step with our federal government). I can use the same logic to connect mothers milk to alcoholism. I know what I believe for certain. Marijuana is nonaddictive, has incredible medicinal benefits, its negative societal impacts are minute compared to alcohol, can’t recall any overdose deaths and it will create some revenue “legally.”

How much revenue is purely speculative but looking at the tourism we draw throughout the year I feel it has a potential to be substantial. We missed the boat once, a second time would be nothing short of ridiculous. City may eventually need that revenue to settle a certain lawsuit I been reading about … Peace to all.

Mike Meyer

Baker City

German chancellor’s speech speaks the truth

On May 30 German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave the commencement speech to the 2019 Harvard University graduates. I highly recommend watching the YouTube broadcast, which can be accessed at the web address at the end of this letter. Although Merkel addressed the huge commencement crowd in German, her comments were alternated with the English translation.

Chancellor Merkel’s theme was about walls that divide us. Having grown up in East Germany, walls are a subject Merkel knows about personally. (During my year (1962-63) studying at Tübingen University in West Germany, I visited the Berlin Wall shortly after it was built.)

Merkel made six points during her speech, which was interrupted many times by applause. But it was her fifth point that received a standing ovation, when she made a plea for honesty. “Dazu gehört, dass wir Wahrheiten nicht Lügen nennen und Lügen nicht Wahrheiten nennen.” Translation: That requires that we not call lies truth and not call truth lies.

Gary Dielman

Baker City