Dear Editor,

Where are we going? I sense a moral ambiguity. It was eighty years ago. I remember mama warning me to not breath deeply coming up the marble to our New York apartment on the fifth floor. Reefer smokers could safely produce the easily discernible unpleasant characteristics of burning hemp.

Eighty years ago, the reefer was smoked guardedly in subterranean places know as hideaways and speakeasies. Herbal engineering has now been groomed to be so respected as to have been allowed to grow openly and develop in community farms then openly harvested. Enthymematic to state my amazement when I saw photos in our community paper of the harvest.

It is heartening to learn that some have been benefited.

It will be five years before we learn of WSU research findings. There will be much work ahead before we learn more from the FDA as well. Identifying the different “strains” of plants and which will be identified for specific disabilities will take time. Studies will differentiate the actions of different “species.” There will be questions as to dosages as well as safety and controls.

I trust that Washington state will prove to be responsible in establishing safeguards to protect our young. An informed public is a strong society.

Please note: are we now much closer to the “Brave New Worlds” of Aldous Huxley? Could he have seen where we are now and where he progressed from where we are now? Where Huxley paints a startling and hallucinatory picture of a civilization that imagines itself free, but that in reality is mindlessly (and happily) captive to the ruling class.

Respectfully submitted,

Marya Silverthorn

Chesaw