The Rev. Al Sharp's Saturday oped on why patients deserve medical marijuana flies in the face of science and the official opinions of the very associations that represent the patients identified. Marijuana is not medicine.

The Food and Drug Administration decides what is safe and effective medicine and has determined marijuana is neither safe nor effective.

The World Health Organization, American Society of Addiction Medicine and the National Institute on Drug Abuse all oppose making marijuana available as medicine.

Mr. Sharp mentioned two patients with multiple sclerosis, but the Society for Multiple Sclerosis opposes marijuana as medicine, and so does the American Cancer Society. Marijuana has 60 percent more cancercausing agents than a cigarette.

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Marijuana is a drug that cripples; and if the medical marijuana bill passes, it will cripple thousands of youth.

In Illinois, 15,759 marijuana users were admitted for treatment in 2010 - 36.4 percent were 12-17 years old.

The medical marijuana bill allows 18-year-olds - high school seniors - - to purchase medical marijuana cards. The card entitles them to buy 21/2 ounces of marijuana every 14 days; 21/2 ounces makes 183 joints.

This bill is an invitation to drug use and dealing in high schools. Each year, two-thirds of new marijuana users are under the age of 18. Additionally, more high school seniors smoked marijuana than smoked cigarettes, according to the 2010 Monitoring the Future Survey. The legislature's action sends the message to teenagers that marijuana is safe.

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Once again this year, in the final days of the outgoing General Assembly before Jan. 9, a coalition of advocates and patients is seeking to legalize medical marijuana in Illinois. We are very close to success, but the last votes are always the hardest to get.

Sometimes when I tell friends what I am working on - medical marijuana - - I am a little defensive. They might see this as a fringe issue. They might wonder why I am spending so much time on it. Whatever the reason, I feel the need to explain.

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"Mandatory sentences breed injustice," Judge Roger Vinson told the New York Times. A Ronald Reagan appointee to the federal bench in Florida, Vinson was railing against a federal system that forced him to sentence a 27-year-old single mother to prison life without parole because her dealer ex-boyfriend had stored cocaine in her house.

Note to D.C. Republicans: This would be a great time to take on the excesses of the war on drugs.

The Times was writing about conservatives, including Jeb Bush and former Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson, who advocate for smarter, more humane incarceration policies under the rubric "Right on Crime." In light of the GOP's need to woo more young voters, drug-war reforms offer an ideological good - limited government - and also might be politically savvy. Think: Ron Paul and his rock star status on college campuses.

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While I'm happy to see the city of DeKalb considering lowering the fine for small marijuana possession offenses, there will still be the problem that this substance is going to be in an illegal market. That means that criminals will continue to control the market and sell it to kids, as well as lacking any quality controls over the product itself.

The best way to keep this substance away from kids is to legalize and regulate the production, distribution and consumption and limit that to adults only, unless medical reasons require it for minors.

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I live with multiple sclerosis; I am asking our state representatives to support the compassionate, tightly crafted medical cannabis bill, House Bill 30. Many other Illinoisans who have worked hard to enact medical cannabis legislation-people living with cancer, fibromyalgia, HIV/AIDS, Crohn's and other debilitating illnesses-have not lived to see the day when we can stop being afraid for our freedom of choice.

I have been at the forefront of the medical cannabis movement in Illinois for the last eight years, testifying before Senate and House committees in support of legislation, visiting countless legislators and interviewing with media outlets locally and nationwide. My story and connections with other patients have given hope to many.

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What is the scientific and medical basis for Illinois politicians considering the legalization of "medical" marijuana? Delta-9tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary mind-altering chemical compound in marijuana, is already a Food and Drug Administration-approved medication and THC pills are already available by prescription. However, the marijuana plant has never received FDA approval because it has not had adequate clinical trials.

One obstacle for approval is that the marijuana plant has hundreds of compounds in varying amounts depending on the plant. Even THC concentration levels vary among plants.

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Yurgine: The war on illegal drugs started with the Nixon administration and has been going on ever since. The mission of the war was to reduce the consumption of illegal drugs by apprehending and punishing those persons who sell and possess drugs. The war has been a complete failure. The demand for marijuana will always be there. The only thing that varies is its price. Do you think with the recent election that we will be able to end the war, at least as regards marijuana?

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I got a whiff of the future the other day, and it smelled like fertilizer.

That was the scent drifting from the doorway of a hydroponic gardening store inmy hometown of Fort Collins, Colo. I had returned there for a Thanksgiving visit just two weeks after the state became one of the first in the nation to legalize the cultivation, sale and recreational use of small amounts of marijuana. What I found was an entire community that seemed ready for the harvest.

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BLOOMINGTON - Medical marijuana is a proven pain reliever and its legalization won't turn thousands of Illinoisans into stoners, argue people who favor medical marijuana legislation that could be voted on next week in the Illinois House.

"Medical marijuana has been shown in numerous studies to work," said Pete Guither, faculty adviser to the Illinois State University chapter of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. "Let's leave it up to the doctors and patients to work out what medicine brings pain relief."

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I'm writing about your story: "Local man arrested for cannabis possession" (11-28-12). I sure hope the citizens and taxpayers of Freeport feel safer now that a heinous marijuana dealer is off the streets.

The fact is that people are substantially less safe today because of our so-called war on drugs. I suggest that the readers view a short video featuring Stephen Downing the former Deputy Chief of Police of the Los Angeles Police Department:

http://tinyurl.com/b3juxa4

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Let's take a pop quiz.

John Wright comes from a prominent family. He has degrees in economics and law from Yale. He worked as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. He was a principal at a venture capital firm.

Mitch Richards used to volunteer for Show-Me Cannabis, an organization working to decriminalize marijuana.

The two are running for a seat in the Missouri Legislature.

Which man is from which party?

Wright is the Democrat. Richards is the Republican.

For the purpose of the quiz, I have, of course, greatly condensed the two resumes of the candidates for Missouri's 47th District. Campaign stories from the Columbia Daily Tribune -- the district includes that city -- indicate that both men are much more than the abbreviated resumes would make them appear.

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CHICAGO - Of all the remote hillsides where a patch of marijuana might grow unnoticed, just off a major highway in the nation's third most populous city hardly seems the place. Yet that was precisely where the authorities this week uncovered a virtual farm of marijuana - - plants up to 10 feet tall in perfect rows across a stretch of land the size of two football fields, and all of it within Chicago's city limits, not far from the Bishop Ford Freeway.

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Three states will vote on legalizing marijuana

Judging from recent history, any young person who aspires to be president should be aware that certain attributes seem to be critical. You have to be male. You have to have an Ivy League degree. You have to have been a governor or senator. And, don't forget, you have to have smoked marijuana.

That is something all the presidents in the past 20 years have in common. Bill Clinton admitted it, while claiming he didn't inhale. George W. Bush refused to deny getting stoned, saying, "When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible."

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On Sept. 20 I read an article in the Register Star that incensed me because it just shows the stupidity of some of our laws over what should be common sense.

It happened in Michigan, where a federal appeals court upheld a federal judge's decision that Wal-Mart had the right to fire someone using medical marijuana. This person had a legal-medical-marijuana card, he has an inoperable brain tumor and cancer, and he uses marijuana to alleviate the pain.

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By the time the 21st Amendment ended national alcohol prohibition in December 1933, more than a dozen states had already opted out. Maryland never passed its own version of the Volstead Act, while New York repealed its alcohol prohibition law in 1923. Eleven other states eliminated their statutes by referendum in November 1932.

We could see the beginning of a similar rebellion against marijuana prohibition this year as voters in three states - Washington, Colorado and Oregon - decide whether to legalize the drug's production and sale for recreational use. If any of these ballot initiatives pass, it might be the most consequential election result this fall, forcing both major parties to confront an unjust, irrational policy that Americans increasingly oppose.

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CHICAGO (FinalCall.com) - Teresa Carmona stood in front of cameras and microphones, facing reporters in the heart of downtown outside City Hall, sharing her story of heartache, and she was not alone. Like many others Ms. Carmona was there to give a face to tens of thousands of victims of violence resulting from the "war on drugs," particularly in the U.S. and Mexico. Nearly 100 people, mostly from Mexico, boarded buses in August in Tijuana and 30 days later landed in Washington, D.C., stopping in nearly two dozen U.S. cities along the way for peaceful marches, gatherings and vigils in Black and Latino communities.

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To the Editor:

Regarding your Aug. 30 editorial, the use of so-called synthetic marijuana is an unintended side-effect of the war on natural marijuana. Consumers are turning to potentially toxic drugs made in China and sold as research chemicals before being repackaged as legal incense. Expanding the drug war will only add to the highest incarceration rate in the world. Chinese chemists will tweak formulas to stay one step ahead of the law and two steps ahead of the drug tests. New versions won't be safer. Misguided efforts to protect children from drugs are putting children at risk.

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Last week, the Mexican Navy nabbed one of the world's biggest drug kingpins, a man said to be responsible for billions of dollars in drugs flowing into the United States and for tens of thousands of deaths.

Score one, you might say, for the war on drugs.

But in a speech at Elmhurst College earlier this month, U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner, one of our nation's most distinguished jurists, called it "absurd" to criminalize the sale or use of marijuana and questioned whether even cocaine is all that dangerous.

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Chicago: Sunday morning. One man dead after taking three bullets - one to the head, two to the chest. Cocaine clasped in hand, and more found near his body, police said.

Mexico City: Last year. Six found bound and choked or suffocated to death. Bags over their heads. The murderers were likely drug traffickers, police said.

Murders and shootings are up in Chicago. They are up in Mexico.

Gun laws and the war on drugs are pivotal to those deaths, said a group of Mexican activists, almost all of whom have lost family members to drug violence, who are traveling across the U.S. to heighten awareness of the problem. On Sunday evening, the activists' Caravan for Peace arrived in Chicago.

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