Per a new study from Harvard Medical School and Northwestern University.

The study conducted by Dr. Hans Breiter of Northwestern University compared the brain scans of marijuana users with brain scans of nonusers. The results showed a direct correlation between the number of times users smoked marijuana and abnormalities in the brain effecting motivation and emotion.

The study determined that pot users who smoke one to seven joints a week had negative changes in the volume, shape and density of their brain’s nucleus accumbens and amygdala, which are regions of the brain that regulate emotion and motivation.

“What we are seeing is changes in people’s core brain regions that you never ever want to fool around with. More studies are needed to determine how these changes may have long-term consequences and whether they can be fixed with abstinence,” said Dr. Breiter.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy helped fund the study, which was published in the Journal of Neuroscience by Harvard Medical School, in cooperation with Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Publisher’s Note: The people of the State of Florida are going to be voting on this issue in a few months. You may want to keep and distribute this information.

—David Eller

If you truly have Parkinson’s disease, glaucoma, multiple sclerosis or certain types of cancer (the main “legal” reasons now being mentioned), and your doctor recommends for you to smoke marijuana for relief, be sure to get it in writing from the doctor. That is so that when you suffer the negative consequences of smoking marijuana, such as emphysema or cancer, there is someone else to blame and perhaps sue.

It is shameful how this issue is being manipulated by certain politicians, especially a certain former governor, who is proving again that he has no shame, and will do or say anything to try to “win” an election.

Negatives far outweigh any benefits from people smoking pot, at least based on my experience as an employer. One of my first negative experiences a number of years ago was when I sent three of my young mechanics down to a Caribbean Island to install some of our equipment on a sugar plantation. The job should have taken a week.

However, three weeks went by and we had not heard from them. This was before cell phones. Therefore, I called the customer, who checked on them and complained that my guys were just sitting around smoking “pot.” I ordered them back home, fired them immediately and sent a supervisor with some others to finish the job. That one incident cost us tens of thousands of dollars and lost a multi-million dollar customer. Lunch time started becoming a problem as some of our folks began indulging themselves in their pot smoking during lunch and came back to work causing accidents. Our workers compensation rate doubled, then doubled again before we figured out what was causing the accidents and took proper action with drug tests, etc. However, just one of the after lunch “accidents” put a man in the hospital for several months and cost over a million dollars in medical costs.

As a final example, a few years ago thousands of brochures on our products had to be thrown away when our man in charge got high on pot and changed the instructions to the printer to weird colors which made them unusable. We fired him, of course, but thousands of dollars were lost, as the brochures had to be corrected by others and reprinted.

These are just a few examples, and we are just one small company. The Florida Supreme Court recently agreed to put the issue on an upcoming statewide vote requiring only 60 percent approval. Certain special interest entities who will make big money are positioning themselves already to finance pushing it through. If it passes, and I’m being told there’s a good chance it will pass, many people will lose their jobs as many employers will simply “throw in the towel” and invest elsewhere.

—David Eller, Publisher

Since our family, the Eller family, has lived in Deerfield Beach since 1923, I’ve often been asked to put in writing some of the history of the area, either experienced personally, or that I heard from my parents or grandparents. For some of you old timers that might be worried about certain old “scandals,” don’t worry, I won’t be writing about those (smile).

David Eller, Publisher

My most memorial Christmas yet my wife’s best and worst

For a Christian, having your birthday on Christmas Eve is a bummer. People can give you a present and say, “This is your birthday and Christmas present. This actually happened to my wife’s father, Arthur, and her mother’s father, Edward, both of whom were born on Christmas Eve. Therefore, when my wife, Deborah, was pregnant with our first child in 1971 and the doctor predicted our baby would be born toward the end of December, we all laughed about it making some sort of record if our baby was also born on Dec. 24.

However, on Dec. 23 about 4.30 p.m., our baby son, Dana, decided he wanted out of his mama’s belly and started kicking hard. This was before cell phones. My wife was at home, and I was driving around locally delivering Christmas gifts to some of our customers and calling her from a customer’s office every hour. I’d just talked to her about 4:15 p.m. and she told me everything was fine. Therefore, I was having a good time at Consulting Engineer John Grant’s office party in Boca Raton. But, when I called home about 5: 15 p.m.and no one answered, I knew I was in trouble. My wife, shortly after talking to me on the phone had suddenly gone into hard labor. Not able to reach me, she called my mother who lived nearby, who rushed over to drive her to Bethesda Hospital in Boynton. My mother, very excited, got lost a couple of times trying to find the hospital, but they finally got there just a few minutes before my wife gave birth. I also arrived to the hospital just in time to also welcome our first born, son Dana, into this world. It was 42 years ago this week. He weighed 7 pounds 11 ounces and was 20 inches long.

The next day, Dec. 24,I went to the store and bought a little boys’ red outfit 20 inches long with Santa and reindeers on it. It turned out to be way too big, as I had forgotten to adjust the length down for his head sticking out of it.

However, unbeknownst to me, the “fun” had just begun. The next day, Christmas, Dec. 25,1971, the Miami Dolphins were playing the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City for the AFC divisional championship.

Both had identical 10-3 records. I just had to watch this game and figured I could visit my wife and new son in the hospital as soon as the game was over. I had no idea that this game would ultimately go down as the longest professional football game in history.

Meanwhile, two of my mother’s brothers arrived in town to visit my grandmother in Boynton. They were big Kansas City supporters and they invited me to watch the game with them and make a $100 bet for the Dolphins to win. I agreed since I figured I would still have time to visit my wife and new son after the game. Big mistake. Miami spent most of the game playing catch-up to Kansas City. Miami tied the score at 24-24 with just 1:25 left in regulation when Bob Griese threw a 5 yard pass to Marv Fleming.

They were still tied after the first overtime. But, midway through the second overtime, Miami kicker GaroYepremian, with shoe laces still untied, kicked a 37-yard field goal to win the longest game in NFL history.

I collected my winnings from my uncles and headed off to the hospital. I arrived just as visiting hours were over. But, when I explained why I was late, I was able to convince them to let me have a short visit with my wife and new son. My wife was not a happy camper, but our new son didn’t seem to care, and, now, he has four sons of his own.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Appropriate personnel should be armed and assigned the responsibility

The first time I had to fire someone (it was for drinking alcohol on the job while running heavy machinery), I was told by the recipient of the firing: “You can’t fire me!”

My father, who owned the company and had taken a well deserved vacation, had let everyone (about 20 employees at the time) know that I was “in charge,” and asked them all to cooperate with my leadership.

I knew that one of our main foremen had a drinking problem, and sometimes drank an alcoholic lunch. My father knew it, but put up with it for some reason. I was not inclined to do so, and asked Dad to tell him in my presence not to be drinking while I was “in charge.”

Dad had only been gone a few days when I smelled booze on the foreman’s breath. I immediately told him to go home and not come back until he could follow the “no drinking on the job” rule. He refused to leave and brought the other foremen over to confront me and back him up.

After a short heated discussion, I told them both that since Dad was gone, I was the only one who could sign the paychecks, and I didn’t intend to sign any for either one of them, so they may as well go home. They both stormed off alter inquiring when Dad would be back.

I then called a general meeting of the rest of the work force and explained that I would temporarily be doing the job of both the foremen, and asked everyone to cooperate. They did, and by the time Dad got back, I had identified replacements and restructured our workforce in a positive way.

Dad was pleased, as though I had taken a couple of thorns out of his side, and he didn’t hire either one of them back.

What has this got to do with protecting our schools? Nothing, except for the good management principle of solving problems as they become obvious.

Today we have a problem of providing security for our schools in a cost-effective manner.

Why don’t we seek out teacher volunteers who can be armed and specially vetted and trained to provide security at our schools? They would be “on call” within the school as needed, and receive a modest “bonus” for assuming that responsibility.

We tried it at our company, and it worked well.

David Eller, Publisher

A couple of years ago, about 2 a.m., I was peacefully sleeping at home here in Deerfield Beach when, suddenly, I heard a noise at the window close by. At first, I thought it was the wind blowing a tree branch up against the window. But as I became more conscious, I realized we did not have a tree branch that close and it was someone actually trying to get into our window. My heart started beating fast as I realized the situation.

Suddenly, the noise stopped, but I woke up my wife, whispered to her what I had heard, and we both lay there listening intensely.

A few moments later, we both heard the sound of the sliding glass door in the adjoining living room being pried open by someone. Whispering confirmations of the sound to each other, we both slid out of bed to get our guns.

We keep a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun and a 36-caliber short barrel pistol conveniently close by. I grabbed the shotgun and passed the pistol to my wife, who is an excellent shot (we go to the gun range occasionally).

We quietly opened our bedroom door and, leading with the shotgun, I flipped on the living room light. Suddenly, we heard our patio furniture being knocked over as the home invaders, who obviously had seen us, decided to run rather than confront the mad man who had a big gun and was ready to shoot them at 2 a.m. in the morning.

The loud “ca chunk, ca chunk” sound as I applied the pump action to my shotgun, which loaded the 12-gauge shells into my gun’s shooting chamber, definitely helped to get their attention. I was starting to aim in their direction when I realized they had turned and were running out the door knocking patio furniture in every direction.

If I had pulled the trigger at that point, I could have shot them both in the back, which I knew to be against the law, and they may have been able to sue me. According to my son-in-law lawyer, you can’t shoot someone who is not an immediate threat to you, i.e. running away.

However, if they had been running toward me, I definitely could have, and would have pulled the trigger to shoot them.

This brings up another important point — if you know you would not pull the trigger in such circumstances, you’re probably better off not having the gun because they could then take it and use it against you.

The above described incident is the third we’ve had in the 40 years we’ve lived in this house.

The first incident 40 years ago we slept through as thieves came right into our bedroom as we were sleeping and took the wallet from my pants and my wife’s purse.

We were young and had less than $20 between us in our wallets so maybe the thief world was told not to bother with us again. However, I put in an alarm system after that, and the second break-in, about 20 years later, scared the thieves away when the alarm went off.

The last incident, which was described at the beginning of this article, occurred after we had become lazy about turning on the alarm system at night. The moral of this story, therefore, is if you have an alarm system, use it.

Attention thieves: We now turn on our alarm system every night and both our guns are still loaded.

David Eller, Publisher