PROPOSITION 215 IS ILLEGAL

You take Gov. Gray Davis to task for continuing to oppose
implementation of California's ``medicinal'' marijuana law,
Proposition 215 (Opinion, July 19). Despite support by the Mercury
News, the solution developed by the task force headed by touchy-feely
state Sen. John Vasconcellos is wrong-headed.

The truth is that Proposition 215 is illegal because it is based on
the impossibly hard act of a state countermanding a federal law.
Further, Proposition 215 creates truck-sized loopholes for
recreational use of marijuana allowing, among other things, wide-open,
home-grown marijuana and uncontrolled, non-physician-generated
marijuana prescriptions.

The solution to getting ``medicinal'' marijuana into the hands of
patients who have no other successful resolution to their pain will
not come from Sacramento but from Washington. Federal law currently
allows a medical doctor to prescribe all kinds of dangerous and
habit-forming opiates and barbiturate-based sedatives, hypnotics and
anti-spasmodics. That law could and should be changed to allow truly
medical use of marijuana.

Of course, such a tightly drawn solution would continue to truly
prohibit, just as opiates and barbiturates are prohibited now, the
growing and sale of marijuana for non-physician prescribed purposes.

I hope you re-think your position so that the dangerous recreational
use of marijuana will not be expanded.

ERNEST KONNYU
Saratoga