Pubdate: Sat, 09 Dec 2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Copyright: 2000 Union-Tribune Publishing Co.
Contact:  PO Box 120191, San Diego, CA, 92112-0191
Fax: (619) 293-1440
Website: http://www.uniontrib.com/
Forum: http://www.uniontrib.com/cgi-bin/WebX
Author:  Eric Poulsen
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1795/a07.html

AN INSULTING EDITORIAL ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Re: "Smoke screen" (Editorial, Dec. 1):

Your editorial on medical marijuana use is an insult to voters in the nine 
states, including California, that have passed laws in favor of it. To say 
that we are all the unwitting pawns of those who want to make all drug use 
legal and that the Supreme Court should strike down Proposition 215 is 
saying that the people are too stupid to govern themselves.

The fact that you abhor the same argument when the courts support a liberal 
point of view doesn't escape this reader.

What is most offensive, though, is your attempt to trivialize and 
marginalize those for whom pot brings relief from nausea and pain and 
severe appetite loss by putting the word "medicinal" in quotation marks 
throughout the editorial. Just because you think their relief is purely 
imaginary doesn't make it so. To use punctuation in such a way makes you 
look sarcastic and mean. Perhaps you could do a little research by talking 
to actual sufferers before belittling them. Then you might be able to keep 
your "reputation" for "fairness," or at least "accuracy."

While the Food and Drug Administration is approving drugs left and right 
that later turn out to be killers, and dangerous substances like Prozac are 
prescribed for millions of children, you cling to our federal drug laws as 
if Moses brought them down from the mountain. I trust doctors to decide 
what is and isn't medicine, not newspapers or politicians.

As an AIDS sufferer who has lost nearly 20 percent of my body weight this 
year because of my illness, I haven't yet availed myself of the use of 
marijuana. But I am furious to think that my doctor could prescribe it, 
only to find that I can't get its relief because you are afraid it will 
lead to heroin use in the public schools, or something equally absurd.

After you have repeatedly vomited from the six or seventh protease 
inhibitor you've tried, the way you blindly cling to an ultra-conservative 
status quo might change. At any rate, don't belittle the voters of 
California with quotation marks. It's offensive.

Eric Poulsen, San Diego
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MAP posted-by: Jo-D