GOOD FOR THE HEAD

Re "State of Denial" (Notes from the Neon Babylon, Nov. 24):

Thanks to the News & Review for Bruce Van Dyke's column. Yes, medical
cannabis is a no-brainer. Anyone who says cannabis isn't medicine is
an intellectual troglodyte.

But worse than our nation's ignorance on cannabis as medicine is our
ignorance of the process behind its prohibition.

No science, no facts, truth or even common sense were ever involved
in the banning of cannabis. Instead it is a pile of xenophobic,
racist newspaper fictions and the manipulations of career prohibition
bureaucrat, Harry Anslinger.

As we found in the mid 20th century, policies founded upon racial
bigotry bear bitter fruit. Cannabis is medicine and has been medicine
since before recorded history. To deprive citizens of medicine
growable in the home garden is cruel and capricious. That cannabis in
any form-whether industrial, medicinal, nutritional or
recreational-is illegal, is a travesty of truth and an act of massive
collective ignorance.

The federal government is lying. Grow up, get over it-and change it.

Allan Erickson

Eugene, Ore.