SMITH'S NOT AS 'RIGHT TO LIFE' AS HE THINKS HE IS

Congressman Chris Smith has made it perfectly clear in the past that he
disapproves of medical marijuana.

He does, however, approve of federal involvement in California's state law
concerning medical marijuana.

It seems that the federal Drug Enforcement Agency raided a medical
marijuana cooperative near San Jose in California back on Sept. 5 and took
away a hundred-plus marijuana plants that were mature and about to become
available to consume as medicine for about 250 seriously ill patients.

Eighty percent of those patients are terminally ill.

Forty patients using the cooperative have died so far this year.

Chris Smith thinks that it is good that those terminally ill patients
should have their medicine taken away.

He agrees with the DEA's actions taken against the cooperative.

It does not matter to him that many of these patients will die in
considerably more discomfort than they would have if they were able to use
marijuana as medicine, as California law would allow.

Chris Smith is not the "right to life" congressman that he thinks he is.

A "right to life" congressman would understand terminally ill Americans'
right to be free to use marijuana if it improves the last days of their lives.

It is, after all, their lives and they do have a right to it.

JIM MILLER Toms River