NO REASON TO LEGALIZE MARIJUANA FOR MEDICAL USE, GIULIANI SAYS

CONCORD, N.H. -- Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said Tuesday that
people who want to legalize marijuana for medical purposes really just
want to make the drug available to everyone.

"I believe the effort to try and make marijuana available for medical
uses is really a way to legalize it. There's no reason for it," the
former New York mayor said during a town hall-style meeting at New
Hampshire Technical Institute.

He also said there are better alternatives.

"You can accomplish everything you want to accomplish with things
other than marijuana, probably better. There are pain medications much
superior to marijuana," he said. "We'd be much better off telling
people the truth. Marijuana adds nothing to the array of legal
medications and prescription medications that are available for pain
relief."

After a speech at the first of several stops in the first-primary
state, the early front-runner in the race for the Republican
nomination fielded questions. None dealt with the unpopular war in
Iraq.

Instead, voters wanted to know about the failed immigration bill and
Giuliani's views on climate change and health care.

Giuliani said promises of universal health care are hollow and simply
not manageable.

"If you try to do socialized medicine, a la Hillary Clinton, John
Edwards, Barack Obama or Michael Moore, you're going to end up with a
disaster," he said.

He urged voters to press other candidates for specifics and to move
beyond lofty language.

"We tried that before," he said. "We tried that with the War on
Poverty, and we tried that with welfare. Look what happened. We tried
a simplistic solution and look what happened. We locked people into
poverty. It was a tragedy."