ALLOW MEDICAL MARIJUANA

In your editorial commending the FDA for rescheduling the antihistamine
Claritin so it can be sold without a prescription, "FDA sees clarity in
Claritin case" (Dec. 5), you, without attempting to do so, make a great
case for the FDA rescheduling another therapeutic agent: medicinal marijuana.

The fact remains that marijuana, or cannabis, has been safely used by
millions of people over the past 10,000 years or longer. The side effect of
rescheduling cannabis so physicians can at least prescribe it? It gives
millions of Americans another tool to treat a wide variety of ailments and
a little more control over their own health care.

Despite years of polling demonstrating Americans overwhelmingly support
relegalizing medical marijuana, including a recent Time Magazine poll
pegging support at 80%, the FDA remains too politicized and beholden to the
pharmaceutical industry to admit the truth about medical marijuana. And
millions of Americans pay the price because a dishonest and corrupt FDA
would rather let Americans suffer and die needlessly than allow them to use
a God-given nontoxic herb, cannabis, that remains safer than any drug the
FDA ever approved.

- -- Gary Storck, Madison