RESEARCH SPURNED

Irvin Rosenfeld is living proof of the federal government's hypocrisy
(Stockbroker using Uncle Sam's medical marijuana for 20 years, Nov.
20).

Even as our government continues to supply Rosenfeld with the medical
marijuana that eases his pain and allows him to live a normal life, it
continues to arrest and prosecute other Americans for doing precisely
the same thing: providing medical marijuana to the sick and suffering.

It gets worse. In September, as White House Drug Czar John Walters was
crisscrossing the country calling medical marijuana ''a lie,'' the
American Academy of Pain Management was devoting an entire day to
medical marijuana at its annual clinical meeting in Reno, Nev.

That meeting heard remarkable new evidence from British studies
documenting marijuana's effectiveness against pain and the symptoms of
multiple sclerosis. Walters chose not to send a representative, and he
continues to misstate the facts.

BRUCE MIRKEN
Director of Communications, Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.