ACCEPTABLE MEDICINE

Dr. George DiFerdinando, the state's deputy health commissioner,
decided last year that seriously ill and dying patients in New Jersey
do not need marijuana as medicine. He said there were acceptable
alternatives for those who would use marijuana as medicine and refused
to implement New Jersey's 1981 Controlled Dangerous Substances
Therapeutic Research Act, which would make legal federal marijuana
available to patients in New Jersey under a doctor's care and
supervision.

DiFerdinando met my wife Cheryl three years ago as she lay in her
reclining wheelchair. She could not move her arms or legs after 30
years of multiple sclerosis. He saw her pain. He heard her tell him
that marijuana relieved her pain and spasticity. He sure didn't tell
Cheryl to her face that she already had "acceptable medicine." Cheryl
Miller, my wife and the light of my life, passed away June 7. I can
assure you her legal prescription medicine was not acceptable. Cheryl
didn't smoke marijuana. She ate it. When it was available, she had
less pain. Now that was acceptable.

Jim Miller, Silverton