Letters

Letters

, Dec 6, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (6 Reader comments)

Audobon Society has good coyote information

To the Editor:

I recall vividly the first time I saw a coyote in my neighborhood (about five years ago). I was walking – alone – in Cooks’ Butte Park. We eyed one another –keeping our distances – and then went on our individual ways. As a professional wildlife biologist, I knew there was little to fear, and I enjoyed watching the behavior of this interesting animal. At the same time, I couldn’t help but feel a bit of caution. Since then, I – like others in Lake Oswego and elsewhere –have seen or heard coyotes.

Therefore, I read with interest, the article by Cliff Newell (“Well-fed coyotes on the prowl”) in the Nov. 22 Review. It did not include, however, reference to one of best sources of information about coyotes in urban areas. The Audubon Society of Portland has an excellent Web site and brochure about living with urban coyotes. It includes information about the natural history of coyotes; laws regarding capturing, relocating, and killing coyotes; and information about living in harmony with them. The Audubon Web site is: www.audobonportland.org . Look under “Living With Wildlife” and then “Urban Coyotes.” You can download a printable brochure, or request one by calling 503-292-0304.

Claire A. Puchy

Lake Oswego

‘Legalization’ seems to be the right way to go in drug war

To the Editor:

The Review’s editorial, “Meth Fight Must Go To The Source In Mexico” (Nov. 29) is appreciated. However there are ways of dealing with the meth problem that too often go unmentioned.

While you rightly point out the decrease in domestic “mom and pop” meth labs as laudable the point about production shifting and moving to Mexico was incomplete. In drug policy reform circles that shift in production is known as the balloon theory. If you take an inflated balloon and squeeze it it bulges. Push that bulge down and another pops up somewhere else.

The drug war is but a new-fangled version of Prohibition and just as with alcohol Prohibition, is a policy that can never succeed. One of the greatest deterrents to drug abuse (which is a separate from drug use) is education. Prison is not an effective deterrent nor an effective rehabilitation model. At least not without totally restructuring our prison system.

What Oregon needs is more money for education. To have prison construction and funding now exceeding education spending is ludicrous and counter productive.

If we wish to end the cartels’ stranglehold on the production and distribution of illegal drugs we must end Prohibition II and re-legalize all drugs and return addiction as a disorder to be treated by the medical profession.

While the prohibitionists always screech at the word “legalization” they do so only to deflect attention away from the obvious failure of our War On Drugs (aka Prohibition II).

Allan Erickson

Drug Policy Forum of Oregon

Eugene

Christmas tree farm directions weren’t quite accurate

To the Editor:

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