A bill proposed by Sen. Jake Corman, R-Bellefonte, would cause Ecstasy dealers to face the same penalties as heroin dealers. This is another example on the part of an elected official of either inexcusable ignorance or pandering to the public.

According to the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, only nine deaths were reported in which Ecstasy was involved during 1998, and other drugs were found along with Ecstasy in six of the nine. Compare that with 110,640 deaths from legal alcohol in 1996.

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On last week's special issue about marijuana:

While I can sympathize with writer Solomon Jones' personal struggles with addiction, it is unfortunate he mistakenly blames marijuana as the gateway to his past perils.

According to a 1999 Institute of Medicine Report: "There is no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."

The report further explains that marijuana has been mistaken for a gateway drug in the past because:

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I am dismayed at the Supreme Court's recent ruling to deny medicinal marijuana patients their medicine.

It is irrational and cruel to turn patients who need medical marijuana into criminals. Seventy-five percent of the American public understands and agrees that marijuana should be legal for medical purposes - just like much more powerful controlled substances such as morphine, methamphetamine and cocaine.

Of course, marijuana is not completely safe. It does have carcinogens when ingested in the smoked form, but most who ingest their medicine in this way smoke only a few small puffs at a time to induce the relieving and quick-acting effects. Saying that marijuana is comparable to cigarette-smoking amounts of carcinogens is unrealistic. People addicted to smokeable nicotine usually smoke several packs a day.

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