MEDICAL MARIJUANA HELPS AIDS PATIENTS

Your July 6 editorial "AIDS reminds us that it never went away," drives
home the message that we cannot afford to ignore this worldwide pandemic.

While the cocktail of anti-viral medications has shown promise in treating
AIDS, it often wreaks such havoc on patients that they are unable to keep
the medications and food down due to extreme nausea. There is a cheap and
effective natural medicine available: marijuana that can help quell the
nausea and wasting that are common to this illness.

Unfortunately, here in America, our failed war on drugs is causing this
lifesaving treatment to be withheld from those who could benefit, by
maintaining the prohibition of marijuana for medical use.

Here in Wisconsin, patients suffering from AIDS and the numerous other
medical conditions for which marijuana has been shown to be an effective
treatment were hoping that the Legislature would take action on a state
medical marijuana bill, AB 715. But the GOP leadership bottled the bill up
in committee, effectively killing it for this session, despite a
Chamberlain Research poll that found more than 80 percent of Wisconsinites
wanted a medical marijuana bill passed. Sponsors have promised to bring it
back next session.

Of all the candidates for Wisconsin governor, only Libertarian Ed Thompson
has been outspoken in support of legalizing this option for sick, disabled
and dying Wisconsinites.

Withholding medicine from the sick and dying is immoral and un-American.

Let's elect Ed Thompson to be Wisconsin's next governor so AIDS and other
patients no longer have to risk arrest and jail, or go without and suffer
needlessly, if they and their physicians make the decision that marijuana
can benefit them.

And Ed will also clean up the caucus scandal and budget meltdown that have
made our once-progressive state one of the most corrupt in the nation.

Gary Storck,

Madison