OBLIVIOUS TO FACTS

Your superb summary of the medical marijuana controversy featured the
intransigence of AG Schuette, who bloviates, "Across Michigan, our
communities are struggling with an invasion of pot shops near their
schools, homes and churches,"

This statement is so oblivious to the facts that it is appalling from
such an official.

Taxpayers have paid Monitoring the Future (MTF) to survey some 2
million teens aged about 14 to 18 since 1975 to provide regular
reports. The short summary of that data is to say that virtually any
teen who has wanted any drug for at least 35 years has been able get
it by simply asking a few peers. In the words of MTF, "[M]arijuana
has been almost universally available to American 12th graders over
the past 33 years."

The MTF questions let 12th graders name which ones of 17 factors had
an influence on their decisions. MTF says, "The reason for not using
or stopping marijuana use cited by the fewest seniors [less than 7
percent] over the 29 years of data included in this analysis was
availability." Indeed, the number who say the drugs are "easy to get"
vastly exceeds those who actually use them.

So Schuette is desperately trying to keep patients from a valuable,
often essential, medicine in order to protect teens by getting them
to buy drugs from some of the million other teens that now sell drugs
in our nation's schools? Does he celebrate himself with a drink of
far more dangerous alcohol?

- -Jerry Epstein, Houston, Texas