JUST SAY NO TO MARIJUANA BILL

Re "Legalizing medical marijuana remains on the table in N.Y. budget
talks," June 22 article:

The above article on medical marijuana raised some serious concerns
with the legislation currently pending in New York state. We should
learn from the experiences of other states before we institute a
system that will create more problems than it solves. As currently
written, the legislation leaves loopholes that will make it easy to
obtain a significant amount of marijuana. The bill allows people over
18 to obtain enough marijuana for 150 to 300 joints if they have a
variety of conditions, including "dysphoria" which is a mood disorder
characterized by anxiety, depression or restlessness. Are these
really the conditions that we want to see treated with smokeable marijuana?

This marijuana would establish neighborhood dispensaries through
which the marijuana will be distributed. In other states these
dispensaries have been associated with crime, noise and abuse in
already struggling neighborhoods. They have required a great deal of
government resources to oversee, regulate and monitor. Do we really
need to spend valuable taxpayer funds on another layer of bureaucracy
to respond to problems created by medical marijuana? This bill should
be sent back to the drawing board for serious revisions that will
prevent the sorts of problems that medical marijuana has caused in
other states.

Janet Buchbinder

Larchmont