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I read your Nov 15 editorial concerning the Keith Green article against
marijuana for glaucoma patients and wanted to respond. I suspect your
editorial is why your paper is known by some as the Bend Bull.

Keith Green is an anti-marijuana activist and his article (in the recent AMA
Journal, Archives of Ophthalmology) is a summary of SOME research, obviously
a compendium assembled to present his viewpoint. It is interesting that prop
67 passed in Deschutes county despite your antiquated, pro-government
prohibition stance to the contrary.

Someone should tell Elvy Musika and Bob Randall (two recipients of doctor
prescribed, federally produced marijuana) that all these years that they
have SMOKED marijuana to treat their glaucoma that it doesn't work.

Many who campaigned for medical marijuana rights did so in order that folks
need not go to jail for using what is an effective medicine for them. Many
medicines currently in use are deadly in a large dose, yet marijuana has no
level for overdose. In fact there are 100,000 deaths a year from legal,
pharmaceutically produced drugs in the US.

Mr Green's article alludes to some of the hazards of pot smoking for
medicine, such as "euphoria." I can understand why the government would want
to stop that!

Your editors should realize that this drug war is far more hazardous to our
health than any drug.

Checked-by: Don Beck