I believe that most Americans are compassionate people but can, on occasion can

be taken advantage of. Having said this I want to talk to you about a well

organized, well funded movement to decriminalize the use of marihuana by

marketing it as medicine. These efforts have created the misconception that

marihuana can be "smoked" safely as a cure-all for a variety of illiness. Please

keep in mind that a significant number of those who support legalization are not

concerned with the compasionate use of the drug but rather it's

recreational use. In  lawenforcement these people are referred to as Pot Heads,

The American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society and the

American Acadamy Of Pediatrics do not endorse the use of marihuana for

medical purposes, Additinally a 2007, Yale School Of Medicine study found that

long term use of marihuana smoking is linked to the same health problems

as tobacco smoke.

It's only fair for me to say that there may be an up-side to this problem, i.e.,

the large tobacco corpoations will pounce on the opportunity to grow, harvest,

process, and package the drug the same way they do it for tobacco cigaretts.

The only difference would be that the marihuana cigaretts would not require the

same warnings on the packages, after all it's allegedly medicine.

We must not let proponents of legalization tug at our heart strings regarding

the compasionate use of marihuana as medicine because I have not been able

to identify any medicine that is "smoked".