SUPPORT FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

The article, ``Some doctors and patients swear by marijuana," The
Prince George's Journal, Sept. 27, ends with, ``Legal or not,
medicinal marijuana users say the drug is easy to get in Maryland.

(Pete) Piringer (a Maryland State Police spokesman) confirmed its
popularity, noting that police make more arrests for marijuana than
for any other drug."

Is it any wonder that the police don't want to give up marijuana's
prohibition, with its safe and easy arrests plus the illusion that
they are maintaining law and order?

GERALD M. SUTLIFF
Emeryville, Calif.

Cannabis has no lethal dose and its pharmacological effects have never
caused a single death in more than 5,000 years of recorded history.

The (unseen) driving force against medical (or unrestricted adult)
legalization of cannabis is the fact that cannabis can't be patented.
This precludes the need for big business to be involved and that fact
makes cannabis commercially unattractive, pharmaceutically speaking.
It seems that if it can't be profitized successfully the government
can't justify legalization even for the sick and dying.

Unfortunately, a change in current policy would necessitate that the
alternative reap more profits (seen and unseen) than our present
policy does.

Maybe the politicians are required to adhere to the party line of
prohibition because law enforcement, customs, the prison industrial
complex, the drug testing industry, the INS, the CIA, the FBI, the
DEA, the politicians themselves et al can't live without the budget
justification, not to mention the invisible profits, bribery,
corruption and forfeiture benefits that prohibition affords them.

The drug war also promotes, justifies and perpetuates racist
enforcement policies and is diminishing many freedoms and liberties
that are supposed to be guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of
Rights.

MYRON VON HOLLINGSWORTH
Fort Worth, Texas

Just want to correct one point [mentioned in ``Some doctors and
patients swear by marijuana."] Medical marijuana use was legal under
the Marijuana Tax Act until the law was declared unconstitutional in
1969. Marijuana was removed from the U.S. Pharmacopeia in 1942 because
of political pressure, not for medical or scientific reasons.

Drug crusaders pretend that some cosmic change in the nature of the
cannabis plant or the human body occurred destroying cannabis's
ability to relieve a wide variety of ailments just before they passed
the Controlled Substances Act prohibiting hemp and medical marijuana
altogether.

The recent Institute of Medicine report puts the lie to every Reefer
Madness excuse for outlawing marijuana for any use, so why do idiot
legislators still pretend to know better than the finest doctors and
scientists in the world?

Don't these lunatic legislators have anything better to do than
persecuting the sick and dying?

REDFORD GIVENS
San Francisco, Calif.

As a sufferer of epilepsy who has used cannabis to prevent seizures
for almost 20 years, I want to thank The Prince George's Journal for
printing Vaishali Honawar's fine article, ``Some doctors and patients
swear by marijuana."

Most epilepsy patients that I encounter have no idea that a safe,
effective alternative exists to the dangerous and debilitating
medications they have been prescribed by their doctors. Because
seizures are so terrible, so dangerous and unpredictable, doctors have
taken drastic measures to abate them.

Patients are typically prescribed Phenobarbital or Dilantin, dangerous
narcotics that over the years will rob many users of their livers and
other vital organs. This pushes hard on the physicians' Hippocratic
oath of ``First, do no harm."

Cannabis, on the other hand, is comprised of antioxidants, ``more
powerful than vitamin C or vitamin E," according to the National
Academy of Sciences. That would explain why no deaths or disease have
ever been blamed on smoking or ingesting cannabis.

Antioxidants are the key to preventing free radical cell damage, which
is blamed for all sorts of disease and mortality.

Just as cannabis heals our bodies, ending prohibition will heal our
society.

LARRY A. STEVENS
Springfield, Ill.