The New England Journal of Medicine's call to grant marijuana legitimate
status as one of the nation's approved pharmaceuticals marks a giant step
in the right direction for American drug policy. Instead of resisting the
idea, the Clinton administration ought to embrace it as a safe and sane
solution to the dilemma posed by Drug War posturing.

Marijuana should be taken from the list of Schedule I substances that
doctors are banned from prescribing or even experimenting with. Instead, it
should be listed as a Schedule II controlled drug that may be legally
administered to relieve pain and suffering.

After all, the Federal Institute of Drug Abuse has it's very own research
marijuana field somewhere in Mississippi.

By the time Reagan took office, there were 25 people in the FDA's
compassionate use program and the government was, and still is, engaged in
harvesting cannabis and shipping it off to a former tobacco plant in North
Carolina. There it is processed into cigarettes and mailed off to doctors
who distribute the pot to patients.

So for 25 years now, the government has been supplying pot to people for
use as medicine. And for 25 years the FDA's official classification of the
drug reads - "Medical Uses: None." Cocaine, on the other hand, is listed a
"local anesthetic" and the equally addictive morphine as an "analgesic."

This classification policy makes about as much sense as the denial of
painkilling narcotic drugs to the terminally ill for fear they might become
addicted.

If people were treated properly for pain there wouldn't be a need
for Dr. Jack Kevorkian.

Tom Hawkins
Grand Coulee, WA