MEDICAL POT NOT COP DOMAIN

Dear Editor,

So apparently "legal grow ops" are a bother to the police [Legal grow
ops a headache for Mounties, March 11, Langley Advance].

And the people who are being blamed are the sick.

I suppose next we will hear is that the blame for sexual assault lies
with women who wear short skirts.

The comparison is appropriate, considering what is proposed is a
registry of medical marijuana patients much like that used for sex
offenders, all for using medicine prescribed to them legitimately --
medicine, it is important to add, that is safer than every single
medication in your local drug store, without exception.

RCMP Supt. Derek Cooke says that "if it is to be used medically at
all," it should be sold in pharmacies.

I guess I missed the meeting where we decided police officers know
more about medicine than doctors.

The science supporting the use of marijuana for cancer, AIDS, multiple
sclerosis, migraines, eating disorders, anxiety disorders,
fibromyalgia, depression, back and muscle pain, colitis, chronic pain,
insomnia, arthritis, crones disease, and many other disorders is
irrefutable.

Each ailment treated by medical marijuana is best served by a
different strain. What one needs for cancer or migraine headaches
won't help someone with MS at all. Will we take this into account?

Will pharmacies carry hundreds of strains of properly cultivated
medical marijuana? Or will it be like the current system, where
patients are given the choice between one type of unusable brown?

What about those who can't smoke, but could eat cookies, such as lung
cancer patients? They are currently not protected under the federal
program, and face jail if caught.

I doubt that these questions -- or the patients -- have even been
considered.

I guess that is what you get when you ignore doctors, scientists, and
public health experts, and allow police officers to create health policy.

Travis Erbacher, Langley