STUDYING POT'S BENEFITS

Re "Clash over pot research gets personal," Aug. 25: Huh? The Bush
administration is eager to spend my tax dollars to develop new types
of nukes and replace the theory of evolution with intelligent design,
but it is opposed to letting researchers grow and study 25 pounds of
marijuana because the feds consider marijuana dangerous and believe
there's no scientific basis for marijuana as a medicine.

The DEA's resorting to personal attacks on those seeking to discover
the facts about medicinal marijuana sounds just like the strategy the
tobacco industry used to keep Americans from finding out the truth
about tobacco. The tobacco industry had a stake in stonewalling the
actual science in order to keep the public from finding out that
smoking wasn't safe. Perhaps the DEA has some stake in stonewalling
the science to keep the public from finding out that cannabis (as a
pain reliever) isn't as nonbeneficial as the DEA claims.

Gary Sawyer, Sacramento