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MEDS, ALCOHOL, POT ARE APPLES AND ORANGES

EDITOR:

Larry Wonderling's rebuttal to Sheila Polk's piece "Marijuana is not harmless" needs further discussion.

He criticizes pharmaceutical companies for advertising psychotropic drugs to solve mood, mental and pain disorders.  Anyone who has treated patients with these problems knows that these drugs are only an adjunct to the physician's therapy.  They still require a prescription written by a licensed physician.  Unless they are stolen or purchased illegally on the street, they are under the control and supervision of the physician.

Comparing the dangerous qualities of alcohol and pot is like saying arsenic is no worse than strychnine.  Alcohol is carefully standardized for potency, is taxed appropriately and the consequences of abuse are well known.  The medicinal use of pot is also controlled by physicians via prescriptions and I have no quarrel with its use where medically indicated.

Marijuana truly is a gateway drug to other mind-altering and rapidly addicting chemicals.  If Larry Wonderling doesn't understand and appreciate that fact, he is under informed.  His opinion of working through life's discomforts, without help from psychotropic drugs under the supervision of a physician, may take us back to a life on the couch.  The fact that psychologists cannot legally prescribe these wonderful adjuncts to therapy may influence his disregard for them.

Allen Cottle, M.D.

Prescott