I am writing in response to Stan Gierhan who wrote regarding the reinvention of cannabis and cannabis products.

What Mr. Gierhan fails to see is that those of us who are deathly ill have numerous problems with mastification of food and pills due to our various illnesses. In other words, as a multiple sclerosis patient, I find it much easier to smoke a cannabis cigarette than I do swallowing more than two thousand milligrams of morphine and 32 other pills I take daily.

I have been a legal marijuana patient for the past 13 years and a retired law enforcement officer in Canada because of these very reasons, and am fighting the drug war from a completely different angle. My pockets are empty. The pills you are offering the public are destroying them because they are all highly toxic and more often than not addictive.

The cannabis plant has no addictive properties and has not once resulted in death. Please Mr. Gierhan, try to have some compassion for those who have no choice like yourself to be pharmaceutical free. Start thinking about the people you are harming.

Alison Myrden, Ontario, Canada. Myrden is a speaker for the law enforcement against prohibition organization. Date: 5/18/2007