Pubdate: Fri, 09 Apr 2010
Source: Monterey County Herald (CA)
Copyright: 2010 Monterey County Herald
Contact:  http://www.montereyherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/273
Author: Thomas F. Lee

FAVORS POT OVER BIG PHARMA

After spending more than a week celebrating the new health care law 
with editorial columns and cartoons, on Sunday The Herald (Rants and 
Raves) manages to pick on little old medical marijuana, questioning 
the motives of the patients who use it. But health care "reform" will 
pour unprecedented volumes of new prescription drugs into the America 
people. Already an estimated 20 percent of people in the United 
States have used prescription drugs for nonmedical reasons. 
Prescription drugs cause most Advertisement of the more than 26,000 
fatal overdoses each year, says the Centers for Disease Control. No 
deaths have ever been attributed to overdoses of marijuana!

Frequently discharged from sewage treatment plants unaltered, 
pharmaceuticals can be toxic to the environment. They enter aquatic 
environments at concentrations approximating well studied 
agricultural pesticides.

So if we want to wage a war on drugs, let's go after Big Pharma 
rather than medical marijuana storefronts. Let's put an end to the 
requirement that taxpayers fund this industry no matter how toxic and 
dangerous the drugs it produces.

Thomas F. Lee

Seaside
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart