MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Editor -- While the Institute of Medicine's report is promising, it neglects
to mention that ingested (eaten) marijuana causes none of the lung damage
typically associated with smoking. Instead, the institute takes the
politically safe approach by focusing on the plant's active ingredients.
This almost assures that if medical marijuana is accepted, patients would
need to buy expensive, patented substitutes, while the plant itself would
remain illegal.

Patients choosing to bypass the pharmaceutical monopoly and grow their own
would still face the usual risk of imprisonment, forfeiture, etc. -- all for
a drug that is safer than aspirin. It remains to be seen whether policy
makers have the courage to accept the marijuana plant the way nature
intended, which, to this day has yet to cause a single human fatality.

JEFF HIRSCH, S.F. Medical Access Project, San Francisco