FEDERAL POT FRAUD

Many thanks to The Tribune for publishing Bob Cuddy's excellent
column, "War trudges on in state versus federal pot laws" (Aug. 3).
There are many people beyond the confines of California's Central
Coast who watched the fiasco of the Charles Lynch trial.

The feds, who have known since 1974 that cannabis is an effective
agent in the fight against cancer (as well as many, many other
conditions and diseases), are not about truth. They are, as the Lynch
trial so clearly demonstrates, perpetuating a fraud (our pot laws)
that are both strangling the essence of justice as a principle of law
and destroying the most basic and fundamental laws of our nation --
our Constitution.

The hypocrisy of the feds in denying the accused any mention of pot as
medicine is laid bare for all to see when the federal government
itself remains the sole legal supplier of medical marijuana in the
United States. The federal Compassionate Investigational New Drug
program (CIND) still distributes about a half pound of medical pot
each month to the few remaining patients enrolled in this program.

But such is the power of the corrupt bureaucratic behemoth that our
drug war has become. The federal lie is blatant and with nearly 80
percent of our nation's citizens in favor of patient access to medical
marijuana ... truly, the emperor wears no clothes.

Allan Erickson

Eugene, Ore.