Ina recent Friendly Fire column, political consultants Mike DuHaime and Julie Roginsky displayed serious ignorance in responding to a question about a demonstration regarding the “right to grow weed (at home),” now barred in New Jersey despite legalization of adult-use and medically prescribed marijuana.
DuHaime characterized home-grown as analogous to making moonshine, and Roginsky figuratively put on a Melania Trump “I don’t care” jacket. The protest, in which six marijuana plants were placed in a Statehouse “garden,” was an act of civil disobedience that had nothing to do with recreational use. It was on behalf of medical marijuana patients who desperately need legal ability to grow at home to deal with serious illnesses.
Medical marijuana is not covered by insurance and is often prohibitively expensive, and it is rare for Alternative Treatment Centers to have the specific strains many patients need. The Legislature included the right of patients to grow at home in the original Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana bill. It was eliminated at the last minute to provide a physician-centered program rather than a patient-centered one.
Patients and other advocateshave been trying without success for years to reinstate this needed provision. Patients do appreciate what state Senate President Nick Scutari has done for legalizing marijuana in the past. However, they are frustrated by his inaction on this critical need.
This is serious situation for medical marijuana patients and doesn’t deserve to be addressed in a frivolous manner.
Ed Hannaman, Ewing
The writer is a board member of the Coalition of Medical Marijuana, New Jersey
Rep. Payne learned compassion from father
Thanks to Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for telling readers in his Mosaic op-ed, “Mayor Baraka on Payne’s death and family legacies,” that U.S. Rep. Donald Payne Jr “inherited” his great gifts as a good-hearted congressman and compassionate humanitarian from his father, who had also been a congressman. (Payne Jr., D-10th Dist., died April 24 at age 65.)
Baraka wrote that Donald Payne Sr. gave his son a “social consciousness” that led to his career of public service and helping others. Payne Sr., who died in 2012, was chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, and he defended human rights throughout the world.
Payne Sr.also advocated for Irish Americans and Northern Ireland. He said that as an African American, he could easily identify with the Catholic minority there. In a congressional hearing, he compared Orange Order marches, staged by part of the Protestant majority, to Ku Klux Klan marches in the United States, saying that both provoked hostility and incited violence.
He introduced bills calling for public inquiries into the murders of human rights solicitors Patrick Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, and for a ban on the British Army’s use of plastic bullets during “The Troubles.” He held hearings on fair employment practices (the MacBride Principles) in Northern Ireland and vigorously supported implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, which decreased hostilities.
Good-hearted and compassionate. “Like father, like son” is a fitting observation.
Ed Neafsey, Avon
Thumbs up to content relocation
The new “local first” format that Star-Ledger print editions introduced this week is one of those changes that, looking back, makes you wonder why nobody thought of this earlier.
Putting these stories on the front page and in the rest of the first section emphasizes and highlights the value that the Star-Ledger brings to the table in reporting local news. And, consolidating the “jump” continuations of longer front-page articles onto Page 2 is another perfect “Duh!” inspiration.
Well done!
Mike Gaston, Somerville
Condo nasty: Apartment owners’ lawsuit without merit
Your recent article, “(Port Liberte) Condominium residents sue neighbor Sims Metal” was welcome comic relief for me.
The “aggrieved” buyers paid top dollar fortheir upscale Jersey City flats on the Hudson River banks, overlooking an existing scrapyard operated by a 100-year-old-plus multinational recycling corporation.
This is analogous to buying a home in a bucolic rural agricultural community and complaining about animal noise and farm odors, or buying a half-million-dollar home near an existing quarry and moaning that they blast rock there.
People, what happened to due diligence? Don’t try to sue your way out of negligence and enrich the legal profession while you’re at it.
Finding empathy for the plaintiffs is scarce from this story.
Robert Michael Dolan, Branchville
Out-of-control comparison
One of your recent articles about the campus protests for Palestine states that former President Donald Trump has claimed the demonstrations show that current President Joe Biden can’t maintain order.
This observation comes from a Republican presidential candidate who has demonstrated incessantly hiscomplete inability to control himself as he shuttles from trial to trial around the country.
If this weren’t so serious, it would be laughable.
Jeffrey Mark, Chatham
Put writing before sports at Rutgers
I am appalled that, according to their labor union, Rutgers University-New Brunswick willlay off 37 adjunct writing program instructors, who depend on year-to-year contract renewals. As I know it, writing is an academic thing.
Yet, taxpayers and tuition payerscontinue to stuff varsity football coach Greg Schiano’s pockets, with his yada, yada talk about making Rutgers a champion.
Sorry, you need to read and write first. That will get students to the long term when their short, athletic glory days are over.
Please, Rutgers, check your priorities. Academics or sports?
David S. Krempecki, South River
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