LEGALIZE IT

To the Editor:

Nobody in the history of the world has overdosed from marijuana. Many
people in America depend on medical marijuana for their medical
conditions and symptoms such as glaucoma, cancer, multiple sclerosis,
nausea, epilepsy, etc.

It's sad how people with chronic pain and deathly illness are deprived
of the only medicine that will work for them.

Prescription medication can become very addicting, and cause death
from building up a tolerance, requiring the patient to use more than
prescribed.

The U.S. government has marijuana classified as a schedule I drug,
which means it has a high rate for abuse and no accepted medical
value. After 16 years of court battles, the DEA's chief administrative
law judge, Francis L. Young, ruled: "Marijuana, in its natural form,
is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known."

The United States is the only industrialized country not growing
industrial hemp. Farmers could grow hemp to feed all of the new
ethanol production plants built in Indiana who cannot get enough corn
from our farmers, which is raising the price of everything since corn
byproducts like corn syrup is used in most of our foods, thereby
raising food prices overall.

Paper could be made from hemp, solving our deforestation problem. Hemp
can yield three to eight dry tons of fiber per acre. This is four
times what the average forest can yield.

In the first year of legalization 18,000 new jobs could be brought to
Indiana, from hemp paper mills to bio fuel plants.

In 2007 the United States imported about 500 tons of hemp from Canada.
Manufacturing companies could save money from buying hemp grown in the
United States, lowering overall costs of production.

Elliott Duquette

Avon