PEOPLE SUFFERING PAIN DESERVE MARIJUANA CHOICE

I must respond to the Your Turn guest column written so eloquently by
state Assemblywoman Mary Pat Angelini regarding the use of medical
marijuana ("Too Many Problems With Medical Marijuana Use," News
Transcript, Jan. 28). She begins by citing the evidence that marijuana
is the most used illegal drug in America. She cites statistic after
statistic of how harmful and dangerous this drug is to our youth. What
she fails to mention is the fact that at least three presidents,
including our newly elected one, has admitted to using marijuana and
other drugs during their oat-sowing days.

She ironically claims to be sensitive to the pain that individuals
suffer from during the grueling rounds of chemo or debilitating pain
from MS or other noncurable diseases. No one can be that sensitive
unless they suffer from that pain and endure the horrible side effects
from legal drugs pumped into the veins by pharmaceutical companies at
enormous profits.

I watched my mother, sister and niece suffer so much while doctors and
hospitals injected them with drugs far more harmful and dangerous than
marijuana could ever be. Many in our society cannot even afford to
suffer the side effects of legal drugs and instead endure an even worse
fate.

She claims that she cannot be convinced a secure system can be put
into place that ensures the responsible production, delivery and
monitoring of medical marijuana. That system is already in place at
any high school, many middle schools and cities across the country. In
fact, a recent story in the press showed that our prisons already have
such a system in place!

She decries the message it will send our youth. Has she turned on the
TV recently? I believe Hollywood has already done a wonderful job with
images ingrained into the souls of our children. How about reading the
newspaper, maybe the messages from Trenton and Washington, D.C., full
of corruption and greed and economic crisis caused by ineffective and
immoral leaders is a message we might be more worried about.

I believe that "We the People" are just a little brighter than
covering our heads and hoping this legislation will go away and so
will the pain. We deserve better treatment, we deserve choice and we
deserve change.

If it was good enough for President Obama to do and rise above it to
be elected to the most powerful position in the world, then certainly
a person suffering deserves the right to smoke some pot and alleviate
their unbearable pain.

Joseph Mercurio

Freehold Township