COLUMNIST OFFERS IMPORTANT VIEW OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

I would like to both thank and congratulate Penny Stine for her
thoughtful and courageous column on the dangers of unchecked
proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries. Penny made some
excellent points, backed by both personal experience and scientific
research, about why society at large and, more importantly, our
elected city and county officials need to seriously regulate and
restrict access to medical marijuana.

Penny is not advocating for blanket removal of all dispensaries. She
is rightfully advocating that if medical marijuana is truly deserving
of the name it should be subject to the same requirements that all
other potent "painkillers" are subject to, not the least of which is
acquiring it through a legitimate prescription from a legitimate
doctor through a legitimate pharmacy.

I hope that any parents who think their child has already or may have
the potential to experiment with marijuana (and let's face it, that's
pretty much every child out there) will clip her column and give it to
their child to read. That's what I did. And I ask our city council and
county commissioners to listen to people like Penny -- she has another
side of the story to tell.

Lynn Lickers

Grand Junction