MEDICAL MARIJUANA: 21ST CENTURY ASPIRIN

Re: "Medical pot users, doctors face tangle of conflicting laws," and "Plants ease
pain, grower says," Sept. 22 news stories.

Boulder County Health Department director Chuck Stout is right when he calls the
federal ban on medical use of marijuana "government gone mad." That's what happens
when you have policy made by fanatics.

As recently as March, White House drug czar John Walters was quoted in
The Washington Post comparing medical marijuana to "medicinal crack."
Meanwhile, back in the real world, in June the 2.4 million nurses of
the American Nurses Association joined American Academy of Family
Physicians, the American Public Health Association and dozens of other
medical and public health groups in support of legal protection for
medical marijuana patients. A few weeks earlier, the respected medical
journal The Lancet Neurology noted that marijuana relieves pain in
virtually every experimental test researchers have devised, and could
well become "the aspirin of the 21st century."

BRUCE MIRKEN

Director of Communications Marijuana Policy Project Washington, D.C.