Dear Editor: This is in response to the editorial "Bradley leads on health
care" that appeared in the Sunday edition of The Capital Times (10/03/99).

I also applaud Bill Bradley's efforts to provide health insurance to
every American, as I cheered President Clinton's attempts to do so
earlier this decade. In your analysis of the Bradley proposal, you
point out that it is flawed in that it "will not provide all Americans
with the sort of high-quality, affordable health care that they could
and should have."

I would like to point out another flaw: Bradley's plan does not
contain any provisions for the legal use of physician-prescribed,
medical cannabis (marijuana). Bradley has recently announced that he
is against the use of Cannabis for legitimate medical uses.

I'm rather confused as to why Bradley is so concerned with healthcare
reform, yet would deny the only medicine that works for several
illnesses for thousands of Americans!

If Bradley is afraid of committing political suicide by supporting
medical Cannabis, he should not be. In every state that has voted on
measures to approve medical Cannabis, including California, Arizona,
Nevada, Alaska, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and the District of
Columbia, those measures were approved by the majority of the people.

In spite of these state elections, federal laws still prohibit the use
of cannabis for any reason even though a White House-commissioned
report from the Institute of Medicine (released in March 1999) agreed
that there are legitimate, medicinal uses for the cannabis plant.

Thousands of sick people must continue to break the law in order to
obtain their medicine.

I urge all Bradley supporters to contact him or his campaign staff to
point out this error in judgment.

J.L. Driver,
Fitchburg, WI