Thank you for pointing out the madness of current law in your June 22
editorial Dazed and confused on medical marijuana. Florida has
flip-flopped on its attitude toward medical marijuana. The Legislature
allowed its use under controlled studies and encouraged research in
the early 1980s. Now the politically popular sentiment is to denounce
marijuana's medical benefits -- even as the National Academy of
Science's Institute of Medicine released a report finding medical uses
for marijuana.

In 1988 Broward Circuit Judge Mark E. Polen, now in the Fourth
District Court of Appeals, issued an opinion in State vs. Musikka, a
case against a legally blind woman arrested for cultivating marijuana
to treat her glaucoma. His words bear repeating: "The absolute
prohibition against marijuana's use, even when such use may be
therapeutically required to avoid grave and irreversible damage,
appears on its face to be irrational. To ignore the plight of such
people renders the law callous to the most basic of all human rights;
the right of self-preservation.

"There is a pressing need for a more-compassionate, humane
law."

Eleven years later, there's still a pressing need. Our Legislature is
adamantly against carving any compassionate niche in the law. That's
why there is currently a citizen-led initiative drive in Florida -- as
there was in California, Arizona, Washington, Nevada, Oregon and
Colorado -- to legally protect medical-marijuana users who have a
doctor's recommendation.

The politicians don't listen to reason, science, evidence or even
opinion polls. It is up to the public to educate them with our votes.

TONI LEEMAN,
Coalition Advocating Medical Marijuana,
Fort Lauderdale