FRIENDS IN WEED

Our pleasure: I would like to express my deepest thanks to the Dallas
Observer and Mark Donald for the extremely well-written and unbiased
portrait of the fight for medicinal marijuana (and eventually legalization)
detailed in the article "Joint Effort" (March 22).

It is not just a fight for our personal freedom but for the alleviation of
suffering and an end to the persecution of the innocent in this great but
faulted country of ours. Your article has surely opened many eyes to the
struggle of people who live in debilitating conditions and are denied what
in many cases is the best and most sound medical option they have, marijuana.

In place of marijuana, legal alternatives are offered that many times prove
much more destructive to the patient in the long run. A recent study
printed by the New England Journal of Medicine detailed that legally
prescribed medications kill 106,000 Americans every year, 20 times the
number that illegal street drugs do. In many of these cases, marijuana may
have been a much safer alternative to the legal medicines prescribed.

As well as the suffering of medical patients, there lies the inherent
suffering of innocent people unfairly demonized in this failed "war on drugs."

The persecution of this plant does not stem from scientific studies
detailing its detrimental effects or from arguable evidence to its
inherently "bad" nature. It's persecution lies solely in the interests of
politics and big businesses, such as petroleum and lumber companies that,
if faced with the competition of the much more available hemp, would be
quickly bankrupted--thus the persecution of hemp, and consequently,
marijuana. This Gestapo-like persecution will continue unless the general
public is made aware of the real facts pertaining to marijuana and its uses.

Due to blatant lying on the part of the government and the never-ending
pockets of big business, a great injustice has taken place and only now,
slowly, are people beginning to see the light.

Rajal Vashisht, Midlothian