PUBLIC FORUM : PATIENTS DESERVE THE RIGHT TO USE MARIJUANA.

I strongly disagree with the Daily News editorial of Oct. 7 against Proposition 215. The reasons expressed in the editorial are completely without reasonable common sense.

The people who would benefit or even imagine that they would benefit from the use of marijuana should have the right of self-determination. If they wish to use alternative medicine, including marijuana, nobody should be allowed to prevent it without positive proof that the treatment does not work.

If we were to wait for double blind studies to be taken on any or all treatments, the medical profession would not be allowed to perform heart transplants or arterial catheterization, radiation or chemotherapy as no double blind studies were conducted on those procedures.

The American Cancer Society has been given billions of dollars to come up with a cancer cure and all they have done is to spend the money on experiments with radical and horrifying medical procedures and even more horrifying poison chemical treatments, with absolutely no positive proof that these procedures work.

The Food and Drug Administration has demonstrated time and again that it will prosecute anyone who comes up with a method or treatment that the major drug companies cannot patent and reap millions of dollars off.

If marijuana, holly berries, rice pudding or newspaper pulp make a patient feel better and relieve suffering, absolutely no organization should be allowed to ban it without definitive proof to the contrary.

- Terence P. McCarthy

Van Nuys

Legalize drugs

During this election year, there has been much discussion on how to reduce the deficit, better spend public money and at the same time reduce crime in our communities. One way I believe this can be accomplished is for our country to seriously consider the legalization of all illicit drugs, including decriminalizing the sale, purchase and possession of such drugs.

We continue to increase the budget for more police, more judges and bigger jails. Spending millions of dollars on this never-ending war on drugs, without any positive results.

Ask any high school student, or for that matter any student at all, how difficult it is to get any kind of illicit drug and I'm sure he can get it as fast as he can get a Big Mac with fries.

When are we going to realize that when we restrict the legal sale of these drugs we are creating a great demand for them, therefore increasing the risk someone is willing to take to supply them illegally in order to reap the huge profits. Shouldn't we have learned this lesson from Prohibition?

Now consider demand: With the majority funds going to fight the supply of drugs, there isn't much left for prevention programs or inpatient hospital programs for someone who may already be addicted. As a result, no real progress is made on the part of demand.

The legalization of drugs could certainly lift a heavy burden from our local police departments, giving them more time to concentrate efforts on crimes such as murders, rapes, gang warfare and armed robberies.

Also, money raised by the legal sale of drugs could be used to fund more sophisticated treatment and prevention programs and to better educate our police department to deal with crimes associated with drug use.

- C. Martinez

Granada Hills

Pipeline dispute

I was in attendance at the City Council meeting of Oct. 1 when the decision was made to go ahead with the lawsuit against the state Public Utilities Commission regarding the Pacific Pipeline Project (``Council votes no on Pacific Pipeline,'' Daily News, Oct. 2).

I live almost directly adjacent to the proposed pipeline route and I want you to know there are many of us in this community who disagree completely with Councilman Richard Alarcon's position on this issue.

When I learned about this pipeline's environmental standards, I thought that at last there was a company that cared about the health and safety of my family. You can imagine my disappointment when I learned that Alarcon would use whatever city resources necessary to stop the project.

It seems as if it doesn't matter what his constituents think. Once his mind was made up, he wouldn't even speak to the supporters of the project.

- Cecelia Rodriguez

Sun Valley

Prop. 214 needed

I am shocked by the editorial from The Sacramento Bee, which you printed Oct. 7 in the ``Other Views'' column. The Bee concluded that because the state Legislature finally passed one tiny law addressing health maintenance organization gag rules, that Proposition 214 is no longer about protecting the quality of health care.

There are many HMO issues addressed by Proposition 214, which the Legislature has not considered to date. As for The Sacramento Bee's contention that the main effect of these initiatives would be to protect their rival labor union sponsors against health industry restructuring at a cost of hundreds of millions, that rhetoric is playing right into the medical insurance industry's hands.

The insurance industry ads on radio and television call 214 and 216 twins. They are not. Proposition 214 does not create a government bureaucracy, as Proposition 216 does, and only requires a simple majority of the Legislature to change any part of it.

Unlike 216, it will not raise taxes. But it will help to curtail HMO abuses and require that they reveal how much of the patient care dollar is being used for marketing, obscene executive salaries and enormous corporate profits instead of patient care.

- Melvin H. Kirschner, M.D.

Van Nuys

Dole's tax plan unfair

Bob Dole's economic plan of cutting 15 percent of the individual income tax is unfair to the middle-class employees and to the lowly minimum-wage earners. His tax cutting is very favorable to the wealthy and corporate executives whose income taxes are, for example, $100,000.

Fifteen percent of that will be $15,000; whereas, to the middle-class employees whose income taxes are, for example, $10,000, their tax cut will only be $1,500, and to the lowly minimum-wage earners whose income taxes are, for example, $5,000, their tax cut will only be $750.

Is this a fair tax cutting, $15,000 against $750? What Dole should present is a fair tax cut, for example, on motor vehicle registration, where the tax cut for the wealthy, corporate executives, middle-class employees and the minimum wage-earners will be the same.

- V.C. Garrovillas

Los Angeles 

City Hall shows disdain for public

Your well-written editorial, ``Gang fight at City Hall'' (Oct. 9), is yet another clear example of how the politicos wish we the people would just go away. This is the same gang that had their heads in the sand during the 1992 L.A. riots, the same bunch that has yet to make up its mind about what to do or how to spend the recent $120 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for seismic reconstruction of City Hall.

And isn't this the same crew that allowed the construction of the new Convention Center without insisting that a major hotel be built concurrently alongside? Yes. And is Los Angeles suffering due to poor bookings at this beautiful new facility? Imagine throwing a party and nobody attending?

And now they want us the people to dole out $7 million a year so Los Angeles can have a sports arena? Give us a break.

Does it really take the residents of Los Angeles to explain to the City Council that development of a facility that will continue to enrich the leagues and team owners should be a completely private matter? Let the Lakers and Kings owners purchase and develop the land without allowing the process to cost us dime one.

This lack of political leadership is creating a tremendous amount of discontent among Angelenos. Enough. The politicos forget that it is of such things that riots and civil wars are made. See you all at the polls.

- Angelo Costas

Los Angeles

Clinton's character is an issue

Think of William Clinton as the president of the United States. Then look back at the formation of our system of government and of Alexis de Tocqueville's assessment of the system. ``America is great,'' he said, ``because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.''

Think again about Clinton as our leader and try to equate the unsavory aura surrounding the man with the ``goodness'' of de Tocqueville.

Consider the excursions Clinton has made down murky shadows - the elaborate means he employed to avoid military service, the alleged dips he took into the Whitewater morass and the malfeasance of the FBI file fiasco.

Clinton supporters discount character by citing administration accomplishments. They neglect, however, to note that most of the substantive programs came from a Republican Congress.

We desperately need to restore the dignity originally given the executive department. When another scandal oozes out of the White House, we can be sure that America will be ridiculed by some nations, mourned by others.

More importantly, our young are cheated when they see less than honor in high places. In time, when they ask ``is that all there is?'' our road to decency will lengthen.

- Frederick Woodson

Calabasas