WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT RIGHT

I found Dr. James Dobson's column on marijuana (Feb. 21) long on propaganda
and short on references. After quoting the "facts" as presented by one
other doctor, he concluded that advocacy of medical marijuana is
"unconscionable." I urge your readers to dig a bit deeper.

Working under the department of Justice, the DEA's own administrative law
judge, Francis L. Young, ruled that marijuana should be rescheduled to
allow prescription use. Medical use of marijuana has also been advocated by
the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine The NYC Bar Association
and the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science favor
an end to the Prohibition. These and the results of dozens of major studies
of marijuana can be found online at www.druglibrary.org/schaffer. From what
I see, there is a tremendous amount of respected science cited by drug law
reformers. The vast majority of the prohibitionists just stick to rhetoric.

After concluding that the federal government wasn't willing to give up its
abstinence just yet, several states recently passed referenda permitting
the medical use of cannabis.

However, even in those places, patients are having to fight an uphill
battle for their medication, due to decades of an ignorant War on Drugs.
Dr. Dobson got it all wrong, it is his stance on marijuana that is
"unconscionable."