Letter: Don’t buy into manipulation of drug legalizers

Tuesday, Nov. 3, 1998 | 10:05 a.m.

This is a word about your medical marijuana initiative. I am a native Californian, a baby-boomer parent with two teens. Twenty-five years ago, I inhaled more than my fair statistical share.

In November, 1996, Californians approved Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. Most people did not read the initiative before they voted.

It has been a mess. After the initiative passed, marijuana "clinics," many run by dealers, cropped up around the state. Pharmacists do not and will not be dispensing marijuana anywhere, because there is no such thing as a marijuana prescription. To do so needs FDA approval.

My city was the only city in California where public outcry, mostly from teens, prevented a so-called marijuana clinic from opening. The marijuana-dispensing "care-provider" publicly advocated marijuana for a pregnant woman's control of nausea from morning sickness. Another organization said that marijuana was a useful treatment for Alzheimer's patients.

Research scientists across the country with no preconceived sociopolitical agenda report that there may be serious adverse effects in the very patients for whom medicinal marijuana is most commonly considered. Your initiative is not about compassion, it is about legalization. Drug legalizers have been systematically manipulating our emotions. Don't buy into it.

Michael Corlett Salinas, Calif.