MEDICAL POT

To The Editor:

Thank you for the common sense attitudes of Lee Monnet. Most
important was his insistence that the U.S. Congress should pass
legislation which would restrain federal agents from arresting and
prosecuting patients in states which allow legal access to medical
cannabis. That's in contrast to the unrelenting stance of President
George Bush's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The ONDCP, the Drug Enforcement Adminstration (DEA) and federal Drug
Czar John Walters insist that cannabis is of the same medical value as
heroin. By leaving cannabis in Schedule 1 (illegal to prescribe or
possess for any reason), they define all patients who use it to be
criminals. Further, Walters and the DEA believe that patients who
legally use cannabis with a doctors recommendation in the eleven
states with such legal access should be subject to arrest, prosecution
and time in federal prison.

Patients, their doctors and concerned families have been trying to get
Washington to listen for over a decade. But our cries are falling on
deaf legislator ears clogged by strident prohibitionist propoganda.
Those who disagree with the federal medical cannabis laws need to
contact their federal legislators and demand they abandon support for
the ONDCP's 1930s reefer-madness thinking.

Stephen Heath

Public Relations Director

Drug Policy Forum of Florida

Clearwater, FL.