PUT OK OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA OFF FOR NOW

Your endorsement Friday of medical marijuana in Illinois is simply
mind-boggling.

The clinical evidence of any medicinal benefit from marijuana is so
limited that the American Society of Addiction Medicine has come out
very strongly against any efforts to bypass established FDA procedures
for testing. The United States has one of the best systems in the
world for assessing and proving the worth of drugs. To bypass those
methods by political fiat is a step backward to selling snake oil and
also a step away from high-quality health care.

What will happen if such legislation is approved? The number of people
complaining of severe and chronic pain will skyrocket. Chronic pain is
very real and difficult to treat, but it is also very subjective and
almost impossible to measure.

With the increase of those complaining of pain will be the increase of
those claiming disability. With that will come fewer people in the
work force, more public aid payments, more broken families and needy
children. Impaired drivers will increase and more money will be
drained from state coffers to cover all this.

Rather than dreaming up ways to spend more and more taxpayer money,
wouldn't it be nice if our legislature spent some time figuring out
how to balance the books? Marijuana legislation needs to be tabled
until reputable scientists have proven with duplicated, double-blind
studies that marijuana does anything more than dull the mind for a
while.

Kirk W. Boyenga

Springfield