Tim Kaine

Governor Kaine,

I live in Norfolk, Va. I’ve lived here for the past 17 years. Norfolk houses one of best medical schools in the state, Eastern Virginia Medical School. Knowing we have a medical school in our state it should push us to try anything that may help medical science, and our state. The drug war is a losing battle, we’ve been fighting this battle for over 70 years. When is it going to end? Making something illegal only serves to a underground market for it, by making it illegal we’re personally allowing drug dealers, gangs, and bloodshed into our neighborhoods.

The American Cancer society estimates in their ‘Cancer Facts & Figures 2009′ (Facts & Figures) that 34,000 people will be diagnosed with some sort of cancer in 2009, many of them to undergo chemotherapy. The side effects of chemo are loss of appetite, vomiting, and severe fatigue. HIV patients also suffer from the same effects from their disease. Using marijuana helps to ease the suffering, allowing them to be able to eat, without proper nutrition these people, will never get any better, only worse. Let’s face it if your car doesn’t have any gas, how do you expect to get to work?

I urge you to look into a debate about the medicinal qualities of marijuana. I urge you to get involved with James Webb (D-VA), Ron Paul(R-TX), Barney Frank (D-MA), Dennis Kucinich(D-OH), I urge you to stand in line with them and show your approval of medical marijuana. I leave you with this quote, a clipping from a report by the Institute of Medicine commissioned by the White House. I suggest reading the whole thing.

“Patterns in progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood are strikingly regular. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs have used marijuana first. In fact, most drug users begin with alcohol and nicotine before marijuana—usually before they are of legal age.” (Marijuana and Medicine)

Michael Clark