MEDICINAL MARIJUANA A HOAX

JOANNE Jacobs' support of medicinal marijuana (Opinion, Nov. 16) would have
been a lot more convincing if she admitted that the so-called ``medical
usage'' has been perverted in San Francisco, San Jose, and Oakland into an
unregulated bazaar supplying every pothead who showed up.

Compassionate voters who approved medicinal marijuana initiatives around the
country were led to believe that they were sanctioning medically supervised
marijuana use for small numbers of seriously ill users, not that they were
opening up the floodgates to supply pot legally to everyone who showed up
with a note from a friend. These voters thought they were approving use of
marijuana prescribed by a physician, with controlled distribution. But they
were misled and outfoxed by those whose real agenda is total legalization.

Now that we have seen the widespread abuses in the Bay Area, and since we
know that marijuana can be a gateway drug leading to more serious addictions
and related social problems, I find it hard to understand how Jacobs,
normally a pragmatic, sensible writer, can fail to see the medical marijuana
movement for what it really is: the opening of a new Pandora's box.

Thomas J. Macdonald
Rio Del Mar

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst