Medical Marijuana: the Government's (Cockeyed) View by an Ignorant Staffer

Maybe the Food and Drug Administration has not found marijuana safe and effective, but everyone else has!

Rafael Lemaitre

(MOLALLA, Ore.) - The staffer is Rafael Lemaitre who is associate director of the office of National Drug Control Policy.

The New York Times has a motto, 'All the news that's fit to print'. This may be the first time of such a colossal goof. The NY Times has printed over 1,700 articles about marijuana, this letter to the editor is pure claptrap. It was written in a garbled fashion in response to Ethan Nadelman's NY Times article, 'Reefer Madness' on 7 November about the total grotesque absurdities of the government's position on medical marijuana.

Now to get to the specifics of Rafael Lemaitre's weird letter. He says that it is not about culture, and counterculture, not a struggle, not a war, but how we APPROVE OF MEDICATIONS AS SAFE AND EFFECTIVE (He really lost the ball on this diatribe). Marijuana/cannabis has been used by almost every culture in the world without harm. It is true it is a struggle by millions of patients all over the world and according to the US government, his own employer, by about 10,000,000 people per day in the US. Most of these people actually smoke it with few adverse effects.

Maybe the Food and Drug Administration has not found marijuana safe and effective, but everyone else has!

He says no national medical association has come out in favor of smoked marijuana. Most of us marijuana doctors would agree. We advise vaporizers, mentioned in a NY Times article about two weeks ago.

The US government owns the patent for using medical marijuana for cancer. I guess Mr. Lemaitre didn't know that either. Thousands of patients use it successfully for glaucoma, pain, muscular sclerosis and about 50 other diseases. I guess he doesn't know that either.

He also says, "marijuana approval should be above the political fray", all of us agree! Why should he be denying sick and disable patients the right to use a medicine that really works with minimal trivial adverse effects?

His final paragraph says, "Like our national drug central strategy, it is a position driven by evidence, not ideology". This is such an egregious fallacy that Rafael should resign his position.

By the way, on 24 November 2011, in the NY Times, letters to the editor, Neill Franklin, Executive Director of LEAP (Law Enforcement Against Prohibition) and former narcotics officer for Maryland State Police and Baltimore Police Dept. for over 30 years, agrees with me and ten million marijuana users.

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