LICENSE TO HEAL

I was pleased to read Collin Levey's perspective: Leave it to doctors and
patients to weigh the risk or benefit to using cannabis. Here in
Washington, there have been several arrests and prosecutions of patients
whose doctors have recommended that the benefit of cannabis outweighs the
risks.

These arrests were not federal, though. They were local. Here in a state
that overwhelmingly supports the right of patients to use cannabis if their
physician recommends it, patients have suffered the indignation, cost and
in some cases have spent jail time due to the zero-tolerance prohibitionist
policy that the federal government has been recommending to the prosecutors.

When someone is very sick, they are uncomfortable and must concentrate
their energy on staying alive. Arrest, having medicine seized and being
denied the right to use the cannabis medicine is very stressful to
patients, and it has been suspected to be the cause of premature death of
at least one person here and several in California.

If their doctor thought it would help, who is a judge or a prosecutor to
say that it wouldn't? Where is their medical license to practice?

Allison Bigelow, Mount Vernon