Reading the Smoke Signals on Medical Marijuana Use

The U.S. Supreme Court case Ashcroft vs. Raich is an important one in the effort to help America’s young people understand that smoked marijuana is not medicine (“The Plaintiff,” by Carol Mithers, Nov. 14). Although the drug legalizers have successfully convinced a vast number of Americans that marijuana is good, parents and grandparents who have watched their children fall prey to this myth will tell you otherwise. There are currently 182,000 young people in treatment for marijuana-related problems.

The drive to legalize marijuana is not in our best interest. Children are America’s most precious natural resource. We should not allow that resource to go up in a puff of smoke.

Joyce Nalepka

President

Drug-Free Kids: America’s Challenge

Silver Spring, Md.

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After reading Mithers’ article, my wife and I are furious with the federal government, particularly John Ashcroft and all of the right-wing moralists who line up against individual rights and needs. That Angel Raich and others like her should suffer because marijuana use is viewed as increasing drug trafficking and decreasing “the incentives for research and development into new legitimate drugs” is saying that unless there is a corporate profit, pain should be endured. The FDA does not approve organic health products, yet many use them, swear by them and benefit from them.

Patrick O’Brien

San Juan Capistrano

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The statement of Rep. Mark E. Souder, “If proponents of ‘medical’ marijuana truly believed that smoking the drug was safe and effective, they would have submitted their data to the FDA,” is simply false. For the FDA to approve marijuana as a prescription medicine, the sponsoring company would have to do clinical trials using quality-controlled marijuana obtained from the same source that would provide it for sale should approval be granted. Federal rules make that impossible.

Clinical research on marijuana must be done using marijuana obtained from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, a notoriously low-quality crop that is not available for commercial sale.

Bruce Mirken

Director of Communications

Marijuana Policy Project

Washington, D.C.