Pubdate: Sun, 29 Apr 2012
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Author: Mikelis Beitiks
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v12/n234/a03.html

SCARE TACTICS ON MEDICAL POT WON'T WORK

Will someone please tell Dr. Ed Gogek (" 'Medical' Marijuana a health 
risk for society," Insight, April 22) that no matter how deep his 
concerns over the abuse of medical marijuana are, and no matter how 
possibly damning some facts he's dug up may be, he is never going to 
convince anyone of the merits of his position if he relies on 
fallacies and scare tactics?

There might be a perfectly sound argument to be made against our 
current medical marijuana system, that much seems fair. However, when 
Gogek presents himself as a public voice against medical marijuana 
while displaying unabashed prejudice against the notion out of the 
gate (putting "medical," a legal definition, in quotes?) and 
employing sleight-of-hand statistical mathematics (he manages to 
conflate cause and correlation both directly and inversely at 
different points in his argument), he does a disservice to healthy 
public discourse on the matter.

Save this kind of air-horn and pie-throwing punditry for cable news, 
please, and leave The Chronicle to more thought-out opinions.

Mikelis Beitiks, San Francisco
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom