Making marijuana available to patients makes sense

Making marijuana available to patients makes sense
EDITOR:
"Hurrah," I shouted to myself as I read the caption "Bill would legalize marijuana in Ohio for medical purposes" in Monday's Vindicator. I applaud state Sen. Bob Hagan, D-Youngstown, for introducing a bill that he knows is controversial and is faced with a long uphill battle.
The senator states, "I am not trying to legalize marijuana. I just believe that allowing people to suffer needlessly when there is an effective drug out there to ease their symptoms is unconscionable." He is speaking for the people who are in the last stages of their disease and are entitled to something which can ease the pain and discomfort.
Years ago a folksy doctor in England wrote a medical column in which he praised morphine for what it did for his patients. He could not understand why we Americans were so fearful. Now morphine is in our hospitals and hospice care. The fear of addiction is not the chief concern -- being pain free in one's last days is the prime concern.
Marijuana is another tool to help ease the pain and suffering of AIDS and other wasting diseases. My son in the last three months of his life had nausea and pain keeping him homebound. His doctor suggested smoking marijuana in a pipe and helped him get some from out of state. He soon was nausea free, pain limited and gained 15 lbs. He went out to dinner, drove his car and walked daily. He had three months of feeling "normal" again and I'm grateful he was in San Francisco where this was possible.
I shall follow this bill with interest and look to The Vindicator to keep me informed.
SALLY WALKER
Boardman
Make the right choice:don't get pregnant
EDITOR:
Mother Theresa said, "It is a poverty that a child must die so that another might live life as they wish." A mother's "right to choose" has been confused with the choice of death for those with no choice at all. The issue has been further clouded under the guise of rape and incest.
Opponents of the rights of the unborn confuse those who value life by convincing them that if a life may have been initiated by a crime or an otherwise unfortunate circumstance, then that life is therefore not worthy of being lived.
The reality is that a woman's "right to choose" would be infinitely more credible if she were to make the choice before engaging in an activity that she may later regret.
In that case, while the issue of rape or incest may remain, 30 million people would have had the opportunity to have experienced "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," a right forever denied to them by their own mothers.
God reminds us that inside the mother's womb is not a choice, but a human being with a future and opportunity that may be denied by the selfish thought by some to be more important than sacrifice.
LEO FEHER
Youngstown
Too stupid to be on top
EDITOR:
Humans never cease to amaze. First they destroy all the predators, then they destroy all the habitat, then they whine about all the deer colliding with their stupid cars and eating all their stupid shrubbery. How humans got to the top of the food chain shall forever remain a mystery.
JANET A. MIKLAS
Austintown