I am a local physician who provides medical-examiner services for the certification of medical marijuana, commercial driver's licenses and pilot-license physicals. I find no shame in the services I provide ("A Sticky Stigma," Medical MJ, Oct. 6). If a person qualifies under the state guidelines and has medical records to confirm their claim, then I do a physical and a record-review.

There is shame for the clinics (mostly from out of state) that will certify patients for medical marijuana based upon undocumented medical history. These people are indeed shameful if they fail to do a comprehensive evaluation before they certify a patient for medical marijuana; the law is very specific in the medical-examiner duties for qualifying a patient for medical marijuana. I personally pre-qualify every patient before an appointment at Med Mar Plus. At the appointment, the emphasis is not on obtaining certification, but upon obtaining treatment for the patient's medical condition. I am proud, not shameful, that I utilize medical marijuana as part of a comprehensive treatment plan.

The certification mills need to be shut down. Medical marijuana is a tool, not the answer. If certifying physicians would treat marijuana in this manner, then the shame associated with medical-marijuana certification would fade.

Dr. Kevin Lewis

[end]

Growing up on the streets of Las Vegas, Vince Riojas wouldn't have thought twice about someone offering to sell him drugs in the middle of the street in the middle of the day.

But Riojas was amazed when it happened recently in Plainview.

A real estate agent, Riojas had sold a house in the Austin Heights neighborhood and was picking up the front yard sign one morning.

"I stopped behind a truck at a stop sign and the guy rolled his window down and stuck out some money and a guy came walking up and sold to him," Riojas recalls. "Right there on Brazier Street at 10 in the morning."

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