Pubdate: Thu, 02 Dec 2010
Source: Reno News & Review (NV)
Copyright: 2010, Allan Erickson
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/issues/reno/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2524
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v10/n970/a07.html
Author: Allan Erickson

GOOD FOR THE HEAD

Re "State of Denial" (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Nov. 24):

Thanks to the News & Review for Bruce Van Dyke's column. Yes, medical 
cannabis is a no-brainer. Anyone who says cannabis isn't medicine is 
an intellectual troglodyte.

But worse than our nation's ignorance on cannabis as medicine is our 
ignorance of the process behind its prohibition.

No science, no facts, truth or even common sense were ever involved 
in the banning of cannabis. Instead it is a pile of xenophobic, 
racist newspaper fictions and the manipulations of career prohibition 
bureaucrat, Harry Anslinger.

As we found in the mid 20th century, policies founded upon racial 
bigotry bear bitter fruit. Cannabis is medicine and has been medicine 
since before recorded history. To deprive citizens of medicine 
growable in the home garden is cruel and capricious. That cannabis in 
any form-whether industrial, medicinal, nutritional or 
recreational-is illegal, is a travesty of truth and an act of massive 
collective ignorance.

The federal government is lying. Grow up, get over it-and change it.

Allan Erickson

Eugene, Ore.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom