MARIJUANA ESSAY FELL SHORT ON FACTS

I am a member of the board of directors of Patients & Families United
(www.mtmjpatients.org), a support group for medical-marijuana
patients regardless of their medical condition and for pain patients,
whether they use medical marijuana or not. As a result, I am very
familiar with the ban on medical marijuana that the Department of
Corrections proposes for the small number of patients who happen to
be on probation.

The department's opinion essay on this issue, published in the Jan.
17 Gazette, is a bold attempt to mislead the public. I can find
nothing in it that is true at all. Contrary to what this "opinion"
essay claims, the department's rule would be a total ban, with no
specified procedure for making exceptions.

Furthermore, in truth, the department already has been imposing this
rule that it hasn't even adopted. And it is doing so without regard
to a patient's medical condition, without regard to the physician's
opinion. It has told no probationer of his or her right to appeal
the ban. And it has imposed this ban even when the treating physician
has protested to the department. In other words, the department
already has been doing precisely what Pam Bunke claims it never would
do!

For Bunke to mislead Gazette readers on this is an insult to patients
who suffer severe medical conditions. I find it very disturbing that
taxpayers have now paid for the department, in addition, to write an
opinion essay that so clearly misrepresents the facts.

RICHARD FLOR

Miles City