Danny the Vampire Fish

Sports Editor John Enrietto’s column “HGH use in prep athletes alarming” (July 27, page C1) asks, why do 11 percent of high school athletes use HGH?

He gave some answers, but as with other drugs — alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and others — there are thousands of excuses.

For myself as a kid, alcohol and tobacco use were to fit in and prove your manhood, to prove you were big, bad and brave enough to do it. Sound familiar? It is their way of being some kind of “peer-anoid” comic book super-stupor hero. We all have passed our stupidity on to them.

Dope, alcohol, tobacco, HGH and all others.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

As I see it, the people who are complaining about not being allowed to get drunk at the concerts on the streets of Butler are the drunks and business owners who create drunks: bars, clubs, liquor stores, beer distributors and booze restaurants.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

In response to James H. Matson’s April 30 letter, “No to DUI database,” I would like to say that it is beer-, wine- and whiskey-drinking people who need booze or drugs to fit in with their friends.

Anti-drinking fanatics don’t need an excuse from an alcohol doctor or psychiatrist to drink to fit in. In my opinion, beer, wine, whiskey and drug users are the real crazies.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

The United States is more than $16 trillion in debt, but is making more millionaires every day.

The U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is what the nation produces. The government taxes people’s earnings to pay for government operations.

What government doesn’t pay for with tax revenue it borrows.

New millionaires are being made because government borrowing permits well-to-do people to pay lower taxes.

Meanwhile, current tax rates permit those who already are rich to get even richer.

Government borrowing ends up being welfare for the rich, just as it is for the poor.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

I consulted my doctor about numbness and tingling in the tips of my fingers after using a weedeater for long periods of time, and in the tips of my toes while showering.

The doctor said the tingling was a result of use of alcohol. She said the alcohol had affected my nerves — even though I haven’t had a drink of alcohol since 1987.

The doctor said heavy use of alcohol can affect the brain, liver and heart, but not the kidneys — although drinking can result in urination in alleys and storefronts after the bars close.

So, I would like to warn college students and teenagers who do a lot of binge drinking (like I did) that in about 30 years they might be suffering long-term effects of alcohol abuse.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

Exaggeration! Both political parties do it.

All the money they raise just means which party can tell us the most lies.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

As voters head for the polls next month, they should be told to vote for the best liar, because lies sound better than the truth.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

In his letter to the editor of Jan. 15, “Question failed drug war,” Dr. Amesh A. Adalja concluded by saying, “All of the violence and associated crime from drugs stem from the fact that it is criminalized, much like what occurred during Prohibition.”

That’s not true.

The violence and crime aren’t because drugs or alcohol are criminalized. Rather, most of the crime and violence come from the altered state of mind from the binge doping or drinking, or addiction.

It isn’t a war on a person’s right to his or her own body. It is a war on riots after sporting events; mangling and killing of innocent people by way of doped or drunk driving; family abuse, physical, mental and monetary; lost workdays etc.

It isn’t just the deaths, but long-lasting or permanent injuries and disabilities to innocent people resulting from illegal-drug users and drunks.

Prohibition wasn’t to protect dopes and drunks from themselves. It was to protect their innocent victims.

So, dopes and drunks aren’t so harmless and innocent after all.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

Since so many people are dissatisfied with Republicans and Democrats in Congress and with the 2012 presidential candidates, efforts should be started to get strong third-, fourth- or even fifth-party candidates.

Danny W. Shultz
East Brady

A PBS television documentary on Prohibition on a Pittsburgh station was biased toward drunkenness. According to the thinking expressed in the program, prohibiting something is what makes people want to do it.