MEDICAL CANNABIS ORDINANCE ALREADY IN PLACE IS PRACTICAL

I enjoyed helping your patient community and the hospitality of your
citizens very much last Tuesday, when I provided documentation and
testimony to your Board of Supervisors regarding medical marijuana.
The ordinance you already have on the books is very practical and
could save your taxpayers a lot of money in the form of fewer
misguided court cases against law-abiding citizens.

Many of the problems cited by law enforcement that were attributed to
medical cannabis are more likely related to bad enforcement tactics
combined with greed on the part of unscrupulous individuals who take
advantage of patients. Both "sides" of this issue would stand to gain
by working together to come up with reasonable solutions to these
problems, rather than in re-inventing the wheel or pointing fingers at
one another. The cannabis industry needs better self-policing and
cooperation with law enforcement, while police need to leave their
politics and moneyed interests out of the public safety equation. I
wish you all the best of luck.

In regards to the comments by Chris Mancini from an April 9 letter
("Letter writer defending medical marijuana misguided"), some clarity
is called for. Cannabis "marijuana" is not addictive. Calling it such
discredits the speaker and does a gross disservice to people who are
trained in addiction medicine and who combat this scourge every day.

Cannabis is socially perceived as addicting in the cute way that
people become "addicted" to a TV show, or a favorite dish, or shopping
for things they don't need. It is not addictive in the real sense,
where users face horrible withdrawal symptoms and dangerous changes in
body chemistry when they attempt to quit and usually exhibit criminal
or unethical tendencies in the furtherance of getting their next fix
while they are using.

Indeed, cannabis has been used for decades in the medical treatment of
addiction to substances like alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine and
heroin, under the model of harm reduction. It's one of the safest
drugs known to humanity and its ingestion has never directly resulted
in a single human death, making it hundreds of times safer than
aspirin. Lastly, the irony of suggesting that patients use Marinol
instead is that it also "gets you high," while costing much more to
produce and having far less medical efficacy than actual cannabis. But
it makes money for big pharmaceuticals, instead of local farmers.

Jason Browne

Red Bluff