COURAGEOUS PROF

Re: "Smoking Pot on Campus", News, Nov. 1, 2006

I applaud Professor MacLean's ability to distinguish for the general
public medicine from social inebriant when utilizing and coming out
publically about his prescription for medical marijuana at York
University recently.

As a retired law enforcement officer who also carries a license to
smoke, possess and grow my own cannabis, I, too, have great
difficulty with the general public thinking that I am choosing to use
this plant for fun rather than therapy, when I am not in my wheelchair.

When people are stricken with debilitating illnesses such as
arthritis and multiple sclerosis (from which I suffer), we are given
little if any hope of full, or even positive, recovery from our
medical troubles.

Cannabis had been found over 5,000 years ago to alleviate illness
without serious side effects for such illnesses as arthritis,
epilepsy and tic douloureux, (an excruciating facial pain I am also
stricken with 24 hours a day and have been for the past 12 years),
with no end in site for relief for those of us suffering if cannabis
isn't part of our medical regime.

Please regulate and legalize all drugs so that the sick and dying
people don't have to go to the street to fill their prescriptions any longer.

Our lives depend on it.

Alison Myrden