BETRAYED BY FEDS

To the editor,

Seriously ill people who need to use medical marijuana have once again been
betrayed by the federal government.

On December 1, the Clinton administration implemented its new medical
marijuana research guidelines, which are still far too cumbersome. The
guidelines also explicitly reject the Institute of Medicine's recent
recommendation to open a federal compassionate-use program to give
individual patients immediate legal access to medical marijuana.

The administration claims that there is no longer a need to change state
laws because the federal research and approval process is wide open for
medical marijuana. That's not true: The new guidelines still place a much
greater burden on medical marijuana researchers than on drug companies that
develop and study newly synthesized pharmaceuticals. Presently, the only
hope for protecting medical marijuana users from the threat of prison is to
remove criminal penalties in the states.

A statement criticizing the new HHS guidelines was signed by Susan
Sarandon, Richard Pryor, scientist Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D., former Surgeon
General Joycelyn Elders, best-selling natural health author Andrew Weil,
M.D., _National Review_ senior editor Richard Brookhiser, AIDS Action
Council, New York State Nurses Association, National Black Police
Association, Reagan administration official Lyn Nofziger, and hundreds of
other patients, doctors, medical organizations, celebrities, and concerned
citizens.

When will the federal government finally listen?

Larry Seguin, 288 Cold Spring Rd., Lisbon, New York 13658-3208, 313-393-7375