Pubdate: Sat, 09 Dec 2000
Date: 12/09/2000
Source: San Diego Union Tribune (CA)
Author: Eric Poulsen
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1795/a07.html

Re: "Smoke screen" (Editorial, Dec. 1):

Your editorial on medical marijuana use is an insult to voters in the
nine states, including California, that have passed laws in favor of
it. To say that we are all the unwitting pawns of those who want to
make all drug use legal and that the Supreme Court should strike down
Proposition 215 is saying that the people are too stupid to govern
themselves.

The fact that you abhor the same argument when the courts support a
liberal point of view doesn't escape this reader.

What is most offensive, though, is your attempt to trivialize and
marginalize those for whom pot brings relief from nausea and pain and
severe appetite loss by putting the word "medicinal" in quotation
marks throughout the editorial. Just because you think their relief is
purely imaginary doesn't make it so. To use punctuation in such a way
makes you look sarcastic and mean. Perhaps you could do a little
research by talking to actual sufferers before belittling them. Then
you might be able to keep your "reputation" for "fairness," or at
least "accuracy."

While the Food and Drug Administration is approving drugs left and
right that later turn out to be killers, and dangerous substances like
Prozac are prescribed for millions of children, you cling to our
federal drug laws as if Moses brought them down from the mountain. I
trust doctors to decide what is and isn't medicine, not newspapers or
politicians.

As an AIDS sufferer who has lost nearly 20 percent of my body weight
this year because of my illness, I haven't yet availed myself of the
use of marijuana. But I am furious to think that my doctor could
prescribe it, only to find that I can't get its relief because you are
afraid it will lead to heroin use in the public schools, or something
equally absurd.

After you have repeatedly vomited from the six or seventh protease
inhibitor you've tried, the way you blindly cling to an
ultra-conservative status quo might change. At any rate, don't
belittle the voters of California with quotation marks. It's offensive.

Eric Poulsen,
San Diego