Finding Solace in Medpot Despite U.S. Drug Policy

Thank you for your excellent piece on medical marijuana refugees in Canada (“The Drug War Refugees,” by Eric Bailey, Feb. 2). I too emigrated from the U.S. in order to best treat my medical condition. Since 1997 I have spent as much time as the law will allow in the Netherlands. I have a severe neuromuscular disease called Hereditary Motor and Sensory Neuropathy, also known as Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. It is a painful degenerative disease--much like multiple sclerosis. Unless I can smoke or eat pot, I am in excruciating pain from morning to night. In addition to cannabis, I use two different opiate medications.

Given the pain relief provided by marijuana, I am able to bicycle great distances in the Netherlands and pursue my hobby of digital photography. I also can attend concerts, movies and plays, and remain comfortable enough to sit through entire performances.

Eric Johnson

Amsterdam

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Our drug czar, John Walters, wants to compare medical marijuana to snake oil. Snake oil is something that was pushed on people by traveling hucksters. People were promised that it would cure their pains, but by the time they tried it and realized it did nothing, the huckster was gone, already plying his wares to a new town of suckers.

Medical marijuana is not being pushed on anyone by hucksters, traveling or otherwise. The people who regularly use it are the ones pushing for its legalization. If we want to use old American concepts, it’s more like a beloved and time-tested home remedy. Walters has so little respect for traditional American values of freedom, truth and democracy that I think he must have been cloned from old Soviet DNA. The whole medical marijuana debacle makes me wonder who actually won the Cold War.

Patricia Schwarz

Pasadena

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For [medpot user] Steve Kubby and many others, Canada is where the freedom is. It seems sad and ironic that our forefathers left Europe and came to America to obtain personal freedoms that were not available in Europe. Now Americans must go to Canada to obtain personal freedoms that are not available in the United States. If adult citizens are not free to put whatever we want into our bodies, obviously we are not very free.

Kirk Muse

Mesa, Ariz.