To the Editor:

With all the articles written about opioid addiction I have yet to see one about personal responsibility.

A person makes a conscious decision to take more pain medication than prescribed by going from doctor to doctor or by buying drugs on the black market. This is not the doctor’s fault or the manufacturer’s fault. It is the person’s choice and action.

We each need to take personal responsibility for our actions and the consequences of those actions.  

We currently have enough addictive issues: alcohol, tobacco, gambling, drugs. And now the governor wants to add recreational marijuana. Studies have not been done to even know the contraindications from pot and other drugs or alcohol. Why risk lives ?

Please read “Tell Your Children: the Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence,” by Alex Berenson.

I have witnessed throughout my life from college in the ’60s forward the effects of marijuana on users and abusers. They include: cloudy thinking, slowed reflexes, disinterest in sex and employment, depression, relationship disintegration, violence, and neglect of home and children as well as the need to increase the daily dosage of pot.

Colorado has an increase in arrests, accidents, emergency-room visits, and violence from recreational marijuana.

I have lived with chronic pain for 25-plus years and I have never asked my doctor for more medication. However, those of us who are responsible are being penalized by the medical community by eliminating or decreasing pain meds.

This is unjust.

Let’s be sensible in New York State by not legalizing recreational marijuana and by rescinding the  current law that allows babies to be killed up until birth.

Arlene Shako

Schoharie