Pubdate: Thu, 03 Nov 2011
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)
Copyright: 2011 Chico Enterprise-Record
Contact:  http://www.chicoer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861
Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Robert Galia

GOVERNMENT FAILS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

This recent ill-advised federal crackdown on California's (and the 
country's) "cannabis problem" is a heartless, brutal slap in the face 
of medical cannabis patients everywhere. There can be no 
justification for the stigmatization we are forced to suffer every 
day just because we have discovered, and wish to take advantage of, 
the many beneficial healing powers of this botanical wonder. We have 
lost faith in the chemical pill and are terrified of the side 
effects. Just because we believe in the right to decide what medicine 
we put in our own bodies we are being treated like second-class citizens.

If our dispensaries are destroyed, many cannabis consumers might 
survive not too uncomfortably. But unfortunately, there are the tens 
of thousands of patients here in California and more thousands all 
across the country who will, now because of their untreated ailments, 
suffer greatly if dispensaries are shut down. It gets worse if they 
end up back in the pharmaceutical pill pit. Or, if they are unable to 
grow their own, even worse yet as they seek out the street dealers 
and are systematically arrested by undercover narcs and made to pay 
most dearly in our criminal justice system.

Our government has failed us badly here - first the state government 
for allowing the industry to expand, and then not defending it, and 
the feds for so brutally violating constitutional rights just to prove a point.

- - Robert Galia, Chico
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom