PROHIBITIONIST THINKING WILL HURT MS TREATMENT

Re: MS sufferers gain access to new drug (SP, June 21). With the Commons
health committee claiming that nearly 30,000 deaths a year are caused by
prescription drugs, City Hospital MS clinic co-ordinator Jan Britz's
reluctance to adopt a new prescription drug is understandable.

What is strange is that her concerns about marijuana seem based on the
prohibitionist propaganda that lingers from the 1930s.

If she had practised nursing in the 1930s, she would have administered many
drugs and remedies that contained cannabis as the active ingredient. It was
then referred to by its Latin name, and was valued by the medical community
for its unique and useful properties.

When prohibition laws were enacted in the 1930s, the medical community
failed to recognize that cannabis was the same as marijuana. Its failure to
act against the unjust law caused needless suffering to patients -- another
tradition Britz seems to want to maintain.

Moe Brondum

North Battleford