Letters to the Editor
October 10, 2018

To the Editor:
It was hard to miss the irony on the front page of your most recent Gazette.
There was Mayor Minjares - a longtime advocate of Marijuana, and now the author of Measure T, a local measure to be voted upon on November 6, which will open to door to Marijuana cultivation in Fillmore. He was sitting among a group of schoolchildren.
Just a few columns over and down was the reporting of the new Fillmore Unified District Resolution, “opposing Marijuana Dispensaries, Deliveries, Personal, and all Commercial Cultivation and other commercial activities.”
Marijuana is known to cause permanent brain damage in the brains of teens and in nursing babies. It is known to be addictive and to act as a gateway drug to unproductive lives of misery. It is still a Federally Illegal Controlled Class I Drug which most doctors are uncomfortable prescribing, and which most pharmacies, unsure of source quality, will not carry. The research on marijuana for medicinal use is at best, inconclusive.
Shouldn’t we, as a town, send a consistent message to our schoolchildren? I hope Mayor Minjares looked into the faces of those schoolchildren and has rethought his belief that indoor Marijuana cultivation in Fillmore is the answer to a possible city budget shortfall.
I believe that we should all, including our Mayor, SAY NO TO DRUGS, VOTE NO on MEASURE T, and keep Fillmore as a town where growing kids is more important than growing… pot.
Patrick King
Fillmore, California