REACHING FOR STRAWS

Editor:

I've just read Ira Gibel's letter, People Need To Be Educated About
Drug Use (Tuesday, July 31) and have to respond.

Mr. Gibel is reaching for straws comparing cannabis (marijuana) to
thalidomide. Thalidomide is one of the iconic tales of the
pharmaceutical industry's push to introduce new drugs without proper
oversight. Cannabis, on the other hand, has been used by humans for
literally thousands of years, safely. In 1988 DEA administrative law
judge Francis Young, after an exhaustive investigation, stated that
cannabis "is one of the safest therapeutic substances known to man."

There are now some 30 million estimated consumers of this ancient
human companion in the U.S. alone. It is believed to now be our
nation's #1 agricultural crop, worth an estimated $36 billion (going
completely untaxed).

UCLA researcher Dr. Donald Tashkin, probably the world's most
renowned investigator of cannabis and the respiratory system
concluded that not only does cannabis not cause lung cancer, but that
it may have anti-cancer properties. A claim verified by a study out
of the Medical College of Virginia in 1974 that found THC slowed the
growth of three kinds of cancer in mice. A study itself supported by
the work of Dr. Manual Guzman of Complutense University in Spain in
the late 1990s.

What is needed is a truthful, public assessment of the plant's
history and an investigation of government improprieties in burying
studies and evidence of cannabis' usefulness. The laws prohibiting
cannabis do more harm than the plant ever will.

Allan Erickson

Drug Policy Forum of Oregon

Eugene, Ore.