ANOTHER BAD IDEA

Editor -- I read with interest your editorial (Sunday, February 22), hoping
that political posturing by the president and the speaker over conduct of
the drug war would not cause Mr. Clinton's plan for drug testing inmates to
be jettisoned.

I agree, superficially at least, that a prison should be the one place
where such a program might be ``successful.'' This led me to wonder -- if
prisons are so secure, why do they have drug problems to begin with? The
answer, of course, is that corruption of prison staffs has proven
impossible to prevent. Just by chance, the Sunday London Times carries a
story about drug testing of prisoners in the UK. The first line reads:
``Figures showing the number of prisoners testing positive for drugs at
Shotts prison, one of Scotland's most secure jails, have been manipulated
to mask a growing crisis, staff members claim.'' The story went on to
describe how older prisoners, known not to use drugs were being tested
excessively to hide the true number of positive tests among younger, drug
using inmates. Like so many other bright ideas for making the drug war
work, it's back to the drawing board for this one as well.

THOMAS J. O'CONNELL, MD
San Mateo

THE CANNABIS PAPERS

Editor -- Failure of the press to cover the suppression of the World Health
Organizations findings that cannabis (marijuana) is much safer than tobacco
or alcohol could easily be construed as demonstrating a bias on behalf of
protecting a well-funded liquor and tobacco industry.

A studious nationwide search failed to produce a single U.S. newspaper that
carried the Reuters news service article that detailed the repression of
this report. Numerous Canadian and UK publications printed this
information. Why not this or any other U.S. paper? New Scientist Magazine
reported in it's February 21 edition and on-line at
http://marijuana.newscientist.com that the WHO attempted to hide the facts.
According to New Scientist, which published a special report on marijuana
on February 18, a leaked document about the analysis concluded that
marijuana posed less of a public health threat than alcohol or cigarettes,
even if people consumed the drug on the same scale as the other substances.
It certainly looks like the conspiratorial even if it isn't.

MARK GREER
Executive Director The Media Awareness Project (MAP) Inc. Porterville

©1998 San Francisco Chronicle