HYPOCRISY RULES IN FEDERAL POLICY ON MEDICAL POT

In response to the excellent April 7 article about Boca Raton resident
Irvin Rosenfeld ("Man travels, packing pot for medicine"): The fact that
the federal government continues to supply medical marijuana to patients
grandfathered in to the government's compassionate-use program before it
was closed to new patients in 1991 underscores the hypocrisy of the Bush
administration's disregard for states' rights. By raiding voter-approved
medical marijuana providers in California, the same government that claims
illicit drug use finances terrorism is forcing cancer and AIDS patients to
buy from street dealers.

Lost in the debate over medical marijuana is the ugly truth behind
marijuana prohibition. America's marijuana laws are based on culture and
xenophobia, not science. The first were enacted in response to Mexican
immigration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American
Medical Association. White Americans did not even begin to smoke marijuana
until a government bureaucracy began financing "reefer madness" propaganda.

Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been
counterproductive at best. An estimated 38 percent of Americans have smoked
pot. The reefer-madness myths long have been discredited, forcing the
drug-war gravy train to spend millions of tax dollars on politicized
research, trying to find harm in a relatively harmless plant. Illegal drug
use is the only public health issue wherein key stakeholders are not only
ignored but persecuted and incarcerated. In terms of medical marijuana,
those stakeholders happen to be cancer and AIDS patients.

ROBERT SHARPE, Program officer Drug Policy Alliance Washington