Legalize it
Oklahoma has a painkiller epidemic with new addicts every day and prescription drug accidental overdoses happening too frequently. People are either suffering or becoming opioid dependent because a naturally occurring plant is illegal in Oklahoma.If a person takes Percocet every six hours for seven days, that person will experience physical withdrawal from opium (diarrhea, chills and fever, loss of appetite, nausea and possibly death). If a person smokes marijuana every six hours for seven days, that person experiences no physical withdrawal symptoms. No one has died from a marijuana overdose. Marijuana should be legal in Oklahoma.
Gov. Mary Fallin endorses a gun range with a bar that sells alcohol. This is a tragedy waiting to happen.
If Gov. Fallin legalized both medical and recreational marijuana, the income the state would receive could be used for better education, better bridges and highways and to make repairs of the state of Oklahoma capitol building.
— David Dill Norman
Freedom from religion
Robin Meyers has once again found something to frown disapprovingly over (Commentary, “If Only I Were a Corporation,” Robin Meyers, Aug. 6, Oklahoma Gazette), but then, we always knew that he would, didn’t we?No matter what Robin may wish to think, the court made a valid decision in the Hobby Lobby case, recognizing that yes, the Greens do indeed have freedom from the religion of their employees.
After all, freedom from religion and freedom of religion are mutually required things; where you do not have one, you do not have either, and any claims that one is more important than the other are symptoms of a failure to pay enough consideration to their natures and needs.
It is, however, a shame that as so many other liberal voices, Mr. Meyers has claimed that Hobby Lobby’s employees are now prevented from access to contraception. The ruling is only that the Greens do not have to pay for it, and it does absolutely nothing to limit the Thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution.
Still, it is a shame that it had to come to this. Let us hope that Congress eventually replaces mandatory insurance with a health care voucher extension to the minimum wage, thereby eliminating the entire argument in one fell swoop.
That the health care mandate was ever included is a sign of the tunnel vision Democrats hold in respect to health care.
And Robin? Your tax metaphor is directly equivalent to saying that you have a moral say in respect to how I spend money that you have given to me as payment.
All moral responsibility ends when the dollar changes hands. Your moral responsibility in regards to taxes is political in nature, not fiscal.
Otherwise, everyone must be a slave to everyone else. — Jared Maddox Oklahoma City
