WRONG MESSAGE

Palo Alto, Calif. -- Our daughter's Sunday school teacher, a close family
friend, contracted HIV through a blood transfusion in 1982. Diagnosed more
than a decade later, AIDS eventually caught up with her. The side effects
of the medications she took forced her to stop teaching. She couldn't eat
and was being fed through a tube. She wasted away and looked like a
skeleton. After visiting her, my daughter had nightmares.

In January of 1997, California's Compassionate Use Act, Proposition 215,
went into effect, and we encouraged our friend to try cannabis because she
clearly qualified for its use. As a Sunday school teacher, she thought it
would send the wrong message to her students. We finally convinced her to
try it in private. Within weeks she was eating voraciously. She was out
enjoying herself. She returned to the classroom.

This unique medicine gave our friend two more years of life. In May of
1999, our friend died from a ruptured pancreas, a result of the highly
toxic AIDS medications she took.

My daughter fully understands that Congress has made possession of
marijuana a federal crime. I recently asked her whether the mixed messages
confused her and how she could reconcile the government's stance with her
own direct experience. "No, I'm not confused," she said. "They're just stupid."

My daughter sees through the government's stubborn refusal to admit to
marijuana's obvious medical benefit and the misinformation campaign used to
support that position. And that sends the wrong message to my kid.

Jane Marcus