PASSAGE OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA BILL PUSHED

Editor: Thanks to Ken Slezak for his reminder of Rep. Scott Suder's
involvement in the caucus scandal and Suder's questionable relationship
with disgraced ex-Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, "Legislators must clean up
their mess"(Dec 28). It is a shame that Suder's unethical behavior did not
receive the scrutiny it should have in the recent election campaign.

Wisconsinites should also remember how Jensen and Suder worked to
deliberately deprive the sick and dying of legal access to medical
marijuana by conspiring to bury last session's medical marijuana bill in
Suder's Criminal Justice Committee, despite poll findings showing over 80
percent of Wisconsinites support legalizing medical marijuana
(www.immly.org/poll.htm).

As a medical marijuana activist with "Is My Medicine Legal Yet?"
(www.immly.org), a board member of Wisconsin NORML (www.winorml.org) and
active in other drug policy reform groups including the Drug Policy Forum
of Wisconsin (www.drugsense.org/dpfwi), I personally have heard of close to
10 Wisconsin patients facing criminal charges for using medical marijuana
in 2002. Patients have had their doors kicked in by police, incurred huge
legal bills, and have been sentenced to jail and had forfeiture proceedings
initiated on their homes.

Is this the kind of state we want to live in, where corrupt politicians
like Jensen and Suder make a mockery of Wisconsin's reputation as a clean
government state while cynically working to withhold an essential medicine
from Wisconsinites under the duress of arrest and jail? Please contact
Governor-elect Jim Doyle and your legislators and request that they move
quickly to pass a medical marijuana bill in 2003 so no more Wisconsinites
will have to choose between easing their suffering and risking arrest and
jail, or going without and facing the misery of uncontrollable pain.

Gary Storck

Director of communications Is My Medicine Legal YET?

Madison