Easing Constant Pain Shouldn’t Be a Crime

Re “A Kinder Pot Policy,” editorial, Nov. 30: Thank you for pointing out the hypocrisy of our current administration. So-called “states’ rights” conservatives have no problem infringing on the personal lives of citizens who do not share their arbitrary, misguided moral code.

However, they will defend to the death the “right to bear arms.” How can it be that the federal government has no right to stop a man from keeping loaded firearms within reach of his children, but an ailing woman cannot use the only drug that brings her any comfort, and two men who love each other cannot have the same rights as a man and a woman? Clearly these “moral” conservatives have a serious problem with their priorities. They aren’t keeping anyone safe by prosecuting these “offenders”; they are only wasting money that we don’t have.

Ragnar Stroberg

Ojai

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When people are in constant pain, they’ll do anything short of selling their souls to obtain relief. My 94-year-old mother suffers from severe arthritis and has been taking medicinal marijuana in the form of chocolate brownies since April. Although it doesn’t alleviate the pain completely, it helps about 50%, which is a lot. You don’t have to smoke it to get relief.

If President Bush and his cohorts suffered from constant and severe pain, they wouldn’t put up all these legal barriers in preventing sick people from obtaining marijuana. It is obscene for the federal government to arrest AIDS and cancer patients in Santa Cruz because they are growing their own marijuana.

We need to legalize the medicinal use of marijuana, and the federal government should keep its nose out of this issue and let the states handle it. Let’s hope that the justices of the Supreme Court use compassion and common sense in deciding this issue and are not influenced by Bush, the Drug Enforcement Administration, ad nauseam.

Joan Kerr

Torrance

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Michael Ramirez’s disgusting cartoon depicting cancer patients as deserving victims of their own bad habits has sunk to a new low (Commentary, Nov. 30). As a cancer survivor and someone who has a friend undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer, I am appalled that The Times would permit such a trivialization of the effects of therapy that patients must undergo. Wait until someone in Ramizez’s family is doubled up with pain and nausea and let’s see if he’d turn down an effective remedy. I think not!

Carol Spector

Ventura

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Ramirez’s latest cheap-shot, fact-challenged cartoon illustrates quite clearly that there is no such thing as compassionate conservatism.

Michael D. Harris

Reseda