Letters: If these laws are good enough for fireworks, why not for marijuana? | Opinion

Idaho’s unique fireworks law: you can sell anybody illegal fireworks as long as they certify that they won’t shoot it off where it’s illegal. We should use this approach to marijuana, sell it to all adults as long as they certify not to smoke it where it’s illegal.

Allen L Wenger, Boise

Tired of verbal abuse

For the second time in three weeks, I was verbally accosted by boys driving through my neighborhood. This evening the language was aggressively and crudely sexual. In both instances, these roving boys felt no compunction about verbally attacking a woman. They were all comfortable that they will escape accountability. I know this because in both instances the driver stopped the car so that the posse could escalate their language and posturing.

If these boys are comfortable with verbally assaulting a woman old enough to be their grandmother, how are they treating the girls in their lives? What crude remarks do they make in the halls of their schools? Or at the mall? Their taunts are the hallmark of deep insecurities. Where did they learn to address their shortcomings by degrading others - a random woman walking down the street?

Initially appalled, I felt a growing sense of sadness. These boys are going to have difficult emotional lives. I feel less safe in my neighborhood of 30+ years. Taking a walk is now risking abuse that I have fought against my entire life. I don’t know what has happened or why. I just know that Boise isn’t quite Boise anymore.

Maria Minicucci, Boise

Scrapping maternal mortality data

Florida governor Ron DeSantis likes to say that his state is “where woke goes to die,” though more accurately it’s where old people go to die. By contrast, Idaho can credibly make the claim that Idaho is where women go to die. This is the next — but not the last — step in the Idaho Freedom Foundation and extremist state legislators’ campaign to shred our basic rights of citizenship.

Idaho’s censorship of public health data about maternal mortality follows recent and ongoing censoring of history, art, and literature, all in service of a broadly bigoted, anti-democratic, and un-American religious agenda that strips women of ownership of their most basic property right, namely ownership and control of their own bodies.

Idaho is the only state in the nation that refuses to compile and study data about maternal mortality. Any state government that takes away established rights and forces American citizens to give birth against their will qualifies as a tyrannical Big Government in my book. Doubly so if it callously disregards and ignores information that affects how many women will actually die before, during, and after the state government forces them to give birth against their will. And this is Christianity, really?

Chris Norden, Boise

Worried about Durst

I am concerned about the appointment of Branden Durst as the superintendent of the West Bonner County School District (WBCSD). Currently Durst does not have the four years of full-time experience working with students needed to be a school superintendent.This is a huge concern for all of us in Idaho who care about the education of our youth.

Superintendents are managers who oversee the day-to-day operations of a school district but they are also leaders who know how to inspire students and staff. Durst does not have the background knowledge to be an effective leader of WBCSD. If this is a job he hopes to achieve, he should spend the next few years obtaining teaching experience in our Idaho schools. Governor Little and Members of the State Board of Education, please do not grant him a provisional certificate. Branden Durst does not have the credentials to serve as an Idaho public school superintendent.

Kayla Dodson, Boise

Solar billing change doesn’t make sense

Idaho Power’s billing change doesn’t pass the smell test.

First, nearly everyone agrees that consumers should be encouraged to use less energy, but somehow using less by investing in solar is cheating? If that’s true then setting your thermostats higher in the summer and lower in the winter, or investing in better insulation or windows is cheating.

And how is it that solar is a solution when Idaho Power pursues it, but a problem when customers do the same? And why are solar users accused of not paying their fair share of using the grid? After all, they pay to purchase, install and maintain rooftop systems that produce power for IP and all of its customers.

And by the way, usage peak is 1 p.m. to 9 p.m. not 3 to 11 as Idaho Power says. It’s tied to temperature and air conditioning, you can look up your own usage online, or check national averages from the U.S. Energy Association.

But these are inconvenient facts easily ignored by Idaho Power. Our only hope is that the Idaho Public Utility Commission acts on the consumer’s behalf and not Idaho Power, whose lobby provides tens of thousands of dollars annually and lucrative jobs to state officials who see it their way.

Thomas Buchta, Boise

Time for dam breaching has come

The need to breach the dams is more imminent. With increases in temperatures, the seething cauldrons they call reservoirs behind the dams are getting more dried out and putrid. Go down and take a look at lower granite reservoir now there is something that looks like an algae bloom. Terrible for fish and humans

Julian Matthews, Lapwai

This story was originally published July 16, 2023 at 4:00 AM.