Pot times

MEDICAL POT

To The Editor:

Thank you for the common sense attitudes of Lee Monnet.  Most important was his insistence that the U.S.  Congress should pass legislation which would restrain federal agents from arresting and prosecuting patients in states which allow legal access to medical cannabis.  That's in contrast to the unrelenting stance of President George Bush's Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The ONDCP, the Drug Enforcement Adminstration ( DEA ) and federal Drug Czar John Walters insist that cannabis is of the same medical value as heroin.  By leaving cannabis in Schedule 1 ( illegal to prescribe or possess for any reason ), they define all patients who use it to be criminals.  Further, Walters and the DEA believe that patients who legally use cannabis with a doctors recommendation in the eleven states with such legal access should be subject to arrest, prosecution and time in federal prison.

Patients, their doctors and concerned families have been trying to get Washington to listen for over a decade.  But our cries are falling on deaf legislator ears clogged by strident prohibitionist propoganda.  Those who disagree with the federal medical cannabis laws need to contact their federal legislators and demand they abandon support for the ONDCP's 1930s reefer-madness thinking.

Stephen Heath

Public Relations Director

Drug Policy Forum of Florida

Clearwater, FL.