DON'T GIVE UP THE DIABETES FIGHT

To the Editor:

Your article about the rising costs of diabetes serves to highlight
our insane policy against the medical use of marijuana.

Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem just reported an experiment
with marijuana cannabinoids that significantly reduced the prevalence
of Type 1 diabetes in mice from an incidence of 86 percent in
non-treated controls to an incidence of only 30 percent.

Meanwhile, even powerful figures like Senators John Kerry and Edward
M. Kennedy, working with the University of Massachusetts at Amherst
on behalf of would-be researchers, cannot break through the barriers
to research thrown up by the federal government.

The witch hunt on marijuana has endured for years; we got past the
Salem witch trials a lot faster.

Jerry Epstein

Houston,

The writer is a board member, Drug Policy Forum of Texas.