MEDICAL MARIJUANA ONE STEP AWAY FROM DECRIMINALIZATION

Recently, your columnist Doni Greenberg made reference to the legalization
of marijuana.

The medical marijuana movement and its media campaign has helped contribute
to the changing attitude among our youth that marijuana is harmless,
therefore contributing to the increase of marijuana use among our young
people after 12 years of steady decline.

The overriding objective behind this movement is to allow a minority (less
than 5 percent) of our society to get "stoned" with impunity. This small
minority is willing to put our citizens at risk from all the negative
effects caused to and by those who are intoxicated. What we don't need is
more intoxicated people on our highways, in work places, schools, colleges,
or in our homes.

The main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, THC, is already legally
available in pharmaceutical capsule form by prescription from medical
doctors. This drug, Marinol, is less often prescribed because of the
potential adverse effects, and there are more effective new medicines
currently available. Marinol differs from the crude plant marijuana
because it consists of one pure, well-studied, FDA-approved pharmaceutical
in stable known dosages. Marijuana is known to be an unstable mixture of
over 400 chemicals including many toxic psychoactive chemicals that are
largely unstudied and appear in uncontrolled strengths.

The manufacturers of Marinol, Roxanne Laboratories Inc., do not agree with
the pro-marijuana advocates that THC is safe and harmless. In the
"Physicians Desk Reference," a good portion of the description of Marinol
includes warning about adverse effects.

Let's call medical marijuana what it really is - a backdoor way to
decriminalize marijuana.