Show Monkey on His Bock The Herald Journal Logan Utah Thursday June 24 M7l Can Laws Curb The Litterbug? Beginning October 1 1972 sales of all nonreturn-abl- e beer and soft drink cans and bottles will be prohibited in Oregon Also banned are cans opened by pulling rings in their tops The recently passed law will require customers to pay a deposit on all beer and soft drink containers in most cases five cents But all other types of containers including milk whisky and wine bottles are exempted legislation has been hailed as a “landmark” and as a resounding victory for conservationists It will be at least a couple of years however before anyone will really know how much a victory it was if any Container manufacturers who have generally converted to the production of lightweight cans and e bottles in place of the heavier and more durable returnables mustered a lot of facts and figures in opposition to the law In the first place they pointed out netal cans and one-wabottles comprise only 13 per cent of the nation’s total solid waste and even if banned would still leave 987 per cent of the solid waste problem to be solved They cited a 1969 study by the National Academy of Sciences of roadside litter in 29 states which showed that almost 60 per cent of litter is paper and about 20 per cent is beverage cans and bottles Most interesting along every mile of highway checked there were almost as many returnable bottles as nonreturnables “For the Amtrican who doesn’t care about his surroundings a few cents deposit apparently makes no dent on his environmentally deficient conscience” for ensays Judd H Alexander vironmental affairs of the American can company Oregon legislators were not persuaded by the arguments UNTIL RECENTLY EVERYONE ignored the billions of gallons water that pours out of generating plants all over the country each day But now it has become a major environmental issue And anything concerned with the environment these days usually is hot of hot To ecologists foe hot water causes thermal pollution killing creatures that cant stand the added heat encouraging the growth of slimy oxygen-depletinalgae and unbalancing foe ecology of rivers and lakes Bui utility companies call it “thermal enrichment" and claim it can increase the growth rate of fish and shellfish on aquatic farms allowing the raising of tropical crops in northern nothouses and and heat for cities provide pollution-fre- e le There’s y The companies have a choice They can either cool the water until it is foe same as or dose to the temperatures of the waterway into which it is discharged-a- nd this could prove to be expensive-- or they can come up with ways of turning the heat from a liability into an asset Richard Wilson’s Interpretive Report vice-preside- mid-Jun- on on $200) Anyone who thinks the can people have got a good thing going and who would like to know the location of the center nearest him can find out by writing to: The Can People Suite 1200 110 E 59th St New York NY 10022 DC WASHINGTON merican leads the world -A- in many things including the consumption of heroin Hong Kong is moving up in this respect but Britain and France are far behind and Communist countries are so strict in the regulation of narcotics that they do not have as do we what President Nixon has termed a “national emergency" The abuse of alcohol consumption is a greater problem for them Rehabilitation of heroin addicts is of course a prime wgency and that is what the increased hinds Nixon has asked of Congress are mainly for plus education and research The central point to be made however is that as Nixon suggests the only really effective way is to end heroin production and the way to do that is to end the growing of scale poppies on a world-widIt cannot be said that we are getting anything like the desired degree of cooperation from the g and opium and morphine processing countries including France Turkey and Asian countries g is a legitimate source of income to supply the raw opium for processing into morphine and codeine for medical purposes But it certainly must be poppy-growin- Poppy-growin- regarded as an illegitimate source of income for the production to heroin as an easily Soldiers And Drugs Some soldiers who have returned from Vietnam publicly scoff at official estimates of drug abuse and addiction among American troops in Southeast Asia Their own estimates range to twice the official figures Exact figures of course are very difficult to ascertain In any event it is dear that a crisis of major proportions exists and must be overcome The government has launched a major effort to combat drug usage with emphasis upon rehabilitation of drug users This effort should be intensive and as extensive as the needs require Veterans Administration Hospitals a:e not equipped to handle the problem and are oberburdened already Rehabilitation centers should be built not only for the military personnel but for the tivilian population involved Of prime importance is President Nixon's drive to cut off supplies of addictive drugs at the source This will be extremely difficult because the trade is highly profitable and the conscienceless producers and procurers and pushers will stop at nothing to further their profits Therefore massive resources must be brought to bear to force a halt to the spread of drug usage among our soldiers many of them no more than boys lonely bored far from home and easy marks for the dream peddlers Drug users are blamed for much of the wanton destruction in riots looting and burning in our cities and universities Of the recent outbreak that caused millions of dollars damage in Albuquerque Charles Barnhart Chairman of the City Commission said he believed “there is no question that drugs were involved - and liquor too" The security of our national defense cannot be trusted to dopeheads Those who show any evidence of such a habit should be removed forthwith the resolute disciplinary measures must be taken to stop the present usage and to prevent any renewal Certainly we can exert extreme pressures upon South Vietnam Laos and Thailand to cooperate in this drive and we should difference in the two viewpoints CONSTRUCTION OF SEVERAL generating plants in power-sho- rt areas is being held up by lawsuits challenging utilities on this issue In Houston foe state of Texas has approved a planned 260(kacre cooling pond for a huge plant that will eventually generate 45 billion watts but the UJ5 Environmental Protection Agency opposes the project It wants the pond to be doubled in size old-tim- In view of this and in view of fhe fact that at latest count there were some 204 pieces of pending legislation in 44 states 29 proposed ordinances in cities and counties and 14 bills in Congress aimed at cans and bottles the container industry is taking a positive approach to try to prove another of its arguments This is that public education enforcement of realistic antilittering laws and recycling are better answers to the waste disposal problem than bans on nonretumable cans ud bottles e As of the Carbonated Beverage Container Manufacturers Association representing four major can companies had established more than 200 reclamation centers from coast to coast (including five in Oregon) The ultimate solution to the nation’s solid waste problem may lie in recycling says Alexander He notes that worth of metals alone are lost each year in unreclaimed waste as compared to spent annually to collect waste The reclamation centers will accept all types of cans both aluminum and steel or combinations Money received from scrap metal dealers will be returned to the local community (Scrap steel currently brings about $20 a ton aluminum about a wide taken addictive which has ruined a quarter million lives in the Uiuted States The illicit laboratories around Marseilles transshipment Communist countries official corruption in Asian countries the possible complicity of Reu China in setting up through processing in a triangular area of Vietnam Laos and Cambodia these are the basic problems recognized by the Nixon administration So long as this growing supply exists it merely means in the long run more and more addiction more and more millions for rehabilitation and more ruined lives by the of thousands One outstanding fact supports that conclusion Not until the heroin was supply of near-ur- e set up in the Southeast Asia triangle and from there made available to American troops did the present “epidemic” of heroin use have its incidence Just why the American troops rather than the native Vietnamese should have fallen victim escapes the knowledge of Nixon's advisers on the problem The nearest they can come to it is that there seems to be some kind of a moral resistance based on different life styles among the Vietnamese troops There are other inadequate explanations like boredom of American troops uider the aimless conditions of foe withdrawal from Vietnam The facts about Vietnam addiction are hard to get at The best figures Nixon’s advisers can supply is that perhaps 1000 servicemen are under treatment for addiction The nearest they can come to foe number using heroin regularly or intermittently is 10 per cent of the American expeditionary forces roughly 20000 which is a ducking figure but nowhere near the more fantastic estimates based on from American servicemen The new system of compulsory testing before return home — hun-(ke- ds word-of-mout- h should shed some additional light but in fact the test period goes back in time only 48 hours and will not be very revelatory about those who use heroin intermittently The testing technique is being improved however and is expected soon to extend farther back in time and may also reveal foe use of amphetamines and possibly marijuana Two conditions will have to be met before there can be much progress in drying up foe source of heroin A substitute will have to be found for morphine for medical purposes International cooperation in ending poppy production then becomes at least theoretically feasible It is a hard fact of life that morphine at least dulls the agony of the afflicted and its medical use will not be abandoned until there is a substitute for it Nixon proposed funds to support the development of synthetic substitutes as well as systematic herbicides to destroy poppy fields The terrible thought intrudes that if synthetic morphine can be produced so can synthetic heroin but perhaps it would be easier to control When all is said and done the main problem is not in Vietnam but in the United States where there are ten times as many addicts Moralizing about it does little good Rehabilitation efforts are absolutely essential Attempts to stop the traffic are imperative But the key effort should be on ending the production of opium poppies As hopeless as that goal might seem certainly it is no less hopeless an international objective than nuclear Next President Of The Nation? The next President of the United States will be Rarely in recent history has it been more fun to speculate as to who'll be our next President because so many want to be I suspect that a lot of are aspiring to the heavyweight championship Just fur having watched Mr Nixon come from behind four years ago They figure if he could anybody can Of course not everybody can tested his own potential One day last January during lunch in foe House dining room Congressman Jim Burke said “Look at all those senators with their Madison Avenue images trying to sound like Presidents Historically our country prefers to move governors into the Presidency because theoretically they have more of foe necessary administrative experience Yet Mr Nixon with experience only as a member of and as Vice Congress Resident— defeated as a candidate for governor— sought and additional House members Jackson and Kennedy all hopeful And of course Humphrey And none of the others wants to help Humphrey until each has FLORIDA POWER AND Light is engaged in research aimed at using the heated water to raise shrimp and pompano on marine forms The company also has begun to dig a six and a half mile long canal to carry hot water away None of this has convinced foe federal government which wants the utility to prove that four power plants planned or already build at Turkey Point won’t harm marine life ATOMIC POWER PLANTS and those that bum coat gas and oil generate a tremendous amount of heat in the production of electricity A plant that generates 100000 kilowatts pumps 11000 gallons of minute cooling water every second Every second-n- ot That's why generating plants are always built on bodies of water IT IS ESTIMATED THAT aside from plants already In operation about 45 new 100000kilowstt generating plants will have to be built every year from now to keep pace with the nation’s demand for power By the year 2000 experts say half of the country’s total ground-watflow of 12 trillion gallons a day will be needed just for cooling er purposes No one really knows what that much heated water will do to the nation's ecology Therefore a number of utilities are working on projects they hope will turn thermal pollution into thermal enrichment on a grand scale IN OREGON’S WILLAMETTE Valley for Instance foe Vitro Carp of America and the Eugene Water and Electric Board are piping hot water two miles to a 17dacre test site Five cooperating farmers spray the heated water on their land to protect against chilling spring frosts Preliminary results indicate that foe method is cutting down crop losses from frost damage When foe weather gets warmer the same system is used for irrigation simply by raising the height of the spray nozzles so the water cools before it hits the ground In several locations aquaculture-- or with hot water fish forming-- is being tried Putting any of these ambitious (dans into use is going to take a lot of time energy and money But utilities are hard at work on them because the thermal pollution issue has become a major roadblock in the path of long-terpower plants m HERE AND THERE — Dr Brooking reminded us that this little item appeared in our column about 19 years ago : “Anyone enjoying good health should stand with his feet on mother earth and his face up to heaven and thank his Creator for '’ foe simple luxury of physical Chamfort commented: “The most utterly lost of all days is that in which you have not once laughed” well-being- Daisy Brown in the Wall Street Journal: "A bore is someone you like a lot when you first meet him— until he talks you out of it” Paul Harvey got foe White House So now we have Sens Hughes and Bayh and Muskie and McGovern and Proxmire and RESEARCHERS FROM THE University of Miami have shown that heated water discharged from Florida Power and Light Company's Turkr y Point (riant 25 miles south of Miami destroyed almost all foe larger seaweeds crabs shrimp and other invertebrates in one area Fishes disappeared from foe Area in summer when the plant’s discharge added to normally high temperatures made the water too hot for survival why don’t we tout somebody from the Hous half of Congress? ” And so they did Tongue in cheek at first a handful of colleagues began to talk up Congressman Wilbur Mills for President Each day endorsed Mills if only because it flattered foe powerful chairman of their Ways and Means Committee Now dozens of the 254 Democrats in the House are supporting for President a man who could walk down most any main street in America unrecognized His most ardent supporters concede that Wilbur Mills is the darkest of the horses in the race but so was Richard Nixon in 1967 You understand that most incumbent politicians like to get themselves mentioned for President if only to enhance their prestige with their home-stat- e voters Few go so far as to establish organizations and solicit financial support for their candidacies Yet Democrats staggered by two assassinations a President scratched and a candidate defeated are suffering from a dearth of proved leadership It's a wide open race for the Democratic nomination among a field of unspectacular contenders Muskie got away from the post fast is lagging in foe backstretch With a year to go it's much too early to speculate intelligently but watch foe party pros-sti- ll lying low- - and you know they are hoping for a sprinter to move out front in foe stretch-b- ut they're putting their show money on Hubert Humphrey So as of this moment 1972 looks like a replay of 1968 The several staying in the race know that on a fast track Nixon will win again But if it's muddy he won’t If he keeps us prosperous and gets us out of Indochina nobody can beat him If he doesni anybody could |