Pubdate: Tue, 14 Dec 2004
Source: Racine Journal Times, The (WI)
Copyright: 2004, The Racine Journal Times
Contact:  http://www.journaltimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1659
Author: Gary Storck

LIFE-SAVING CANNABIS

How can we, as a society, continue to tolerate the legislative fiction that 
keeps life-saving cannabis from the Jacki Rickerts of the world, 
"Debatable: Should medical use of marijuana be legal in Wisconsin?" (Nov. 
30)? The people of Wisconsin have already spoken loud and clear on the 
issue of medical marijuana. A February 2002 poll commissioned by Is My 
Medicine Legal Yet? a group Jacki and I co-founded in 2000, found that 80.3 
percent of Wisconsinites support legalizing medical marijuana 
(immly.org/poll.htm).

Only 16 percent statewide were opposed, meaning that medical cannabis has 
five supporters to every opponent.

So if 80 percent of us support letting people with multiple sclerosis, 
cancer, glaucoma, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or other illnesses use medicinal 
pot, it should mean that of our 132 state legislators, 99 Assembly 
representatives and 33 senators, about 106 should support it. In other 
words, if the people we elect to represent us actually represented us, 
medical marijuana would have been a reality years ago, and a lot of good 
folks would have had it a little easier. Please let your elected 
representatives know that you are one of the 80 percent and that this 
session, you expect Rep. Gregg Underheim's bill to not only get a committee 
hearing, but also a full debate and a vote up or down in the legislature. 
To continue to ignore the suffering of ailing Wisconsinites any further is 
unconscionable.

Gary Storck, director of communications

Is My Medicine Legal YET? www.immly.org, Madison 
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MAP posted-by: Beth