Editing 78-01-B7 (section)

= Pot =

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=== Transcript ===
On last November 21st I read an article by a mother about her teenage son and
his experience with marijuana. She told of her first awareness of a change taking
place--a change in the personality of her son and of his admission he was smoking
pot. One phrase she used in describing this change was that she watched his "eyes
growing dimmer."

Her story had a happy ending. He stood before her one day, his eyes no longer
dim and told her he had quit because he finally realized what the weed was doing to
him. Her story ended with the statement that she looked at her son and, "knew he
had become a man".

On December 3rd, the Los Angles TIMES printed a page of letters it had received
in response to this story. I couldn't believe the viciousness and outrage of the
writers. One accused the mother of practicing "parental fascism". Most of them
carried on about one generation forcing its standards on another and made it plain
that in their view she was some kind of monster for disapproving of marijuana.

Then, on December 17, in the same editorial section there appeared a response
to the letters by a local teacher named Patrick Kennedy. He wrote, "I could not
in good conscience sit back and not reply to those opinions about marijuana use
and teenagers." He told of the experience--sometimes exhilarating, sometimes heart
breaking--of being close to 200 teenagers, seeing their struggles with the problems
of growing up. Speaking of them as a generation "needing and unconsciously seeking
moral guidance and structure," he asked, "if parents are not responsible to provide
a moral atmosphere, stressing the values they find important, who is responsible?"
Answering his own question he said, "this is not parental fascism--it is parental
commitment to the most sacred of all tasks: to see that the young get a good start
with healthy roots and a straight growth in the proper directions". He called it a
responsibility that is being avoided by too many of us and that our society is
paying the price.

He asked the letter writers if they had ever been closely involved with bright
young teenagers: "Have they seen those bright eyes slowly become dimmer, the once
quick minds less attentive? Have they experienced the slow growth of paranoia in the
eyes of these students; the inability to look you in the eye any longer with that
innocent look of trust and friendship?"

Telling of the heartbreak in seeing th.at happen he said of pot. "It poisons
the mind in the sense that when a problem arises in the life of a teenage pot smoker
he or she doesn't solve the problem. It's too easy to avoid it by getting high.
So they reach adulthood without ever facing or overcoming adversity."

Any parents who find their sons and daughters in the classes of Patrick
Kennedy should be very happy. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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=== Details ===
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<TR><TD WIDTH="150">Batch Number</TD><TD WIDTH="150">{{PAGENAME}}</TD></TR>
<TD>Production Date</TD><TD>01/09/[[Radio1978|1978]]</TD></TR>
<TD>Book/Page</TD><TD>[[Radio_Commentary_Books#Reagan.27s_Path_to_Victory|RPtV-255]]</TD></TR>
<TD>Audio</TD><TD></TD></TR>
<TD>Youtube?</TD><TD>No</TD></TR>
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===Added Notes===

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