L.A. Parker sounds like a politician in his column, "City men hit death lottery." He proposes to deal with the problem of gang violence by concentrating on elementary school children.

That's a politician's feel-good proposal whose results wouldn'tbe known for 10 years or more. It does nothing to address the problem of gang violence now.

Guess what? It won't work in 10 years, either. Actions against gangs speak louder than any indoctrinating words to children.

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Terrence Farley, Ocean County first assistant prosecutor, continues to deny that there is scientific evidence that supports marijuana as medicine. In 1988, the Drug Enforcement Administration concluded two years of hearings on the issue of medical marijuana. The DEA's own Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young, found that:

"The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasoning, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefit of this substance in light of the evidence in this record."

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Dear Sir:

The federal government's campaign against seriously ill Americans who use marijuana medicinally is an atrocity in the "war on drugs" ("Federal Boondoggle - Use of medical marijuana by terminally ill under siege," The Times, March 3, 2002.) Agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently closed several dispensaries in California that were providing marijuana to over a thousand patients. Even in the midst of a war, it is considered humane to allow the sick and dying to be medically treated. It is inhumane to do otherwise.

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