Letters to the editor for Nov. 29

Weed is harming our youth

Drug abuse has been rising in the Yelm community. Many students do it before, after, and during school. Drugs have been affecting students’ social/academic life. They leave school to go smoke or are too high to even focus during a class period.

Weed and nicotine have taken a negative toll on youth. A recent analysis using data from three large studies in Australia and New Zealand found that adolescents who used marijuana regularly were significantly less likely than their non-using peers to finish high school or obtain a degree. When asked how marijuana affected their cognitive abilities, career achievements, social lives, and physical and mental health, the majority of those who used heavily reported that marijuana has negative effects in all these areas of their lives.

Employees who tested positive for marijuana on a pre-employment urine drug test had 55 percent more industrial accidents, 85 percent more injuries, and 75 percent greater absenteeism compared with those who tested negative for marijuana use.

Weed is having a huge affect on young teens. We need to take a stand for our teens’ health and their future.

Farming for climate healing

I am increasingly impressed by the potential of land-based methods of carbon drawdown to mitigate climate change. Many of these practices could be applied on farms large or small, conventional or organic. Interspersing trees with food crops or livestock animals adds diversity of nutrients to the soil.

Planting cover crops like clover, hairy vetch and rye carry nitrogen from the atmosphere into the soil. Rotational grazing (allowing cows or other ruminant animals to intensively graze a pasture, then moving them to adjacent fresh pasture to allow the first one to regrow) adds significant fertility to soil; planting trees in the pasture increases soil carbon even more.

No-till farming and permaculture (working with nature’s systems to create multi-layered, compact food gardens with minimal machinery or other disturbance) are among many ecological agriculture practices that partner with Earth and soak up atmospheric carbon.

Plants are carbon storehouses. While living, they turn carbon dioxide into sugar and energy; when they die, their decomposed bodies permanently store carbon into the soil (as long as no tillage occurs).

I ask our state lawmakers to allocate significant funding to agricultural carbon sequestration projects. Our state’s farmers deserve to be financially rewarded for implementing carbon drawdown solutions. Let’s be good ancestors to our grandchildren and the many species with which we share this wild Earth. Thank you.