IT'S TIME TO END ZEALOTRY ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

I read with growing annoyance and anger Terrence P. Farley's letter of
response in the Feb. 24 Ocean County Observer to views priorly expressed in
the newspaper on the so-called medical marijuana question in support of the
legalization of doctor-prescribed marijuana for medicinal use in those
cases in which such use would be medically appropriate. In support of his
stand against such use of marijuana -- or any use, for that matter --
Farley trots out the tired and tiresome anti-drug zealot's scare list of
studies on the "evils" of marijuana, all of which have in the past been
shown to be largely without merit by other studies equally well-documented,
if not nearly as widely disseminated (surprise!).

To further bolster his case, Farley provides another list; one showing all
those venerable organizations that reject the idea of the medical use of
marijuana. A cursory examination of the organizations on that list will
immediately reveal they all share something in common beyond their
opposition to marijuana for any use whatsoever. In their research
activities, at least, they're all beneficiaries of the monetary largess of
that most zealot-ridden and paranoid of the world's anti-drug institutions
- -- the federal government of the United States of America - an institution
that by its Draconian drug laws is, in large part, responsible for this
country's so-called "drug problem," and an institution that has spent, and
wasted, more than a quarter century and billions upon billions of taxpayer
dollars attempting to eradicate the eradicable, and, in the process,
produced evils of magnitudes more egregious than the largely fictional evil
it was attempting to eradicate.

Enough is enough. This rabid anti-drug zealotry and paranoid lunacy must
finally cease, and some semblance of sanity be brought to bear, not only on
the instant issue, but on the issue of drugs and drug use generally as well.

Andrew Crichton Douglas
Lakewood