Editor,
Two important bills have been introduced in the New Mexico Legislature this year.
The first bill, SB8, is a medical marijuana bill. The question of the medical use of marijuana is a public health issue; it should not be a part of the war on drugs, nor should the Bush administration's idiotic crackdown on health food stores for selling hemp cookies.
To deny an effective medication to the sick and dying is cruel and reprehensible, and improperly interferes with the relationship between a patient and her/his doctor. We already allow the medical use of many drugs, such as cocaine and morphine, which can be abused in a non-medical setting.
Basic compassion and common sense dictates that we allow the seriously ill to use whatever safe medication is most effective.
HB25, a marijuana decriminalization bill, has also been introduced in the New Mexico Legislature. Law-abiding citizens who smoke marijuana responsibly are not part of the crime problem, and we must stop treating them like criminals.
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Arresting and jailing marijuana smokers wastes law enforcement resources that are needed for serious and violent crime, and it has a terribly destructive impact on the lives, careers and families of the more than 700,000 marijuana smokers arrested each year in this country.
It also fills our jails up with non-violent people and causes judges to let more serious criminals get probation or early release for far more serious crimes. The medical marijuana decriminalization bills will help ensure that medical marijuana patients and recreational marijuana users in New Mexico will not have to fear arrest or prosecution.
Now is the time to contact your legislators and urge them to support both of these important pieces of legislation. Gov. Gary Johnson will sign them both into law as soon as they hit his desk.
Richard "Bugman" Fagerlund, B.C.E.
UNM Environmental Services
