BATTLE OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA MAKES NO SENSE

As a retired law enforcement officer and spokesman for LEAP (Law
Enforcement Against Prohibition), I follow the medical marijuana with
interest.

LEAP is an international organization comprised of thousands of police
chiefs, sheriffs, police officers, deputies, prosecutors, judges,
federal drug and FBI agents, prison wardens and corrections officers
who believe the so-called War on Drugs is a dismal failure and
self-defeating policy which has thus far cost thousands of lives and a
trillion dollars with nothing positive to show for it.

We believe the only practical and humane way to address the drug
problem is to legalize, regulate and control all drugs as we do with
tobacco and alcohol.

Drug use/abuse must be addressed as a public health and education
problem. We understand this to be a complex, difficult topic. What
should be a no-brainer, however, is the use of marijuana as medicine.

As I know from family experience, marijuana provides pharmaceutical
benefits not available from other cannabinoid, or, at least, not to
the same level or degree of efficacy. Why this one plant has been
singled out for such controversy is beyond asinine.

We should not be wrangling with the problem of dispensaries and their
attendant potential for abuse. Marijuana should be a drug available
for prescription by licensed physicians, period.

A common response from opponents is that the Food & Drug
Administration has not found marijuana to be beneficial. The problem
with that argument is that the FDA hasn't yet done the mandatory
research to allow marijuana's addition to the pharmaceutical cornucopia.

Why? Because it has been stymied by pressure exerted on the federal
government by groups prejudiced against the use of marijuana for any
reason. This taboo is a throwback to the days of the film "Reefer
Madness" (cue the scary music).

Reasonable people can engage in cogent debate regarding the
legalization, regulation and control topic. It is not reasonable to
deny physicians a medicine to provide their patients relief from pain
and nausea.

Let us, at least, get past this unnecessary stumbling block.
Desperately sick people need this medicine. We can talk about the rest
later.