The Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association should be commended for its report titled "Marijuana: Its Health Risks and Therapeutic Potential." Not only does the report present evidence of marijuana's potential harms, it distinguishes this concern from the legitimate question of marijuana's significant medical benefits. Too often, the hysteria that accompanies public discussion of marijuana-related social abuse undermines a clear appreciation of this crucial distinction. Since 1978, 32 states have abandoned the federal ban on legislatively recognizing the important medical properties of marijuana. However, federal law continues to define marijuana as a drug with "no accepted medical use," and federal agencies continue to prohibit doctors' and patients' access to marijuana. This outdated federal ban corrupts the intent of state laws and deprives thousands of glaucoma and cancer patients of the medical care promised by their state legislatures. This is an excerpt from a letter written in 1982 to the editor of the Journal of the American. Medical Association. Its author was a citizen concerned about the complete lack of rationality repeatedly demonstrated in the federal government's attempts to justify the ban on the use of marijuana for medical purposes. It wasn't some exhausted former hippie who wrote this letter. The citizen concerned was none other than the current Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich. He co-sponsored a bill to end the federal ban on marijuana as a medicine. He has since abandoned his support for such initiatives and begun attacking the kind of hypocrisy and misinformation typical of the federal government's policy toward medical marijuana. Gingrich's bill failed despite overwhelming public and factual support. Lawmakers, yielding to a vocal minority, struck it down. Fourteen years later, the silent majority has spoken out. In a move that must have made Nixon spin in his grave, it turns out that the silent majority supports this drug use. In the fall of 1996, two states voted in referendums to legalize marijuana. California's Compassionate Use Act and Arizona's Drug Medicalization, Prevention and Control Act passed by convincing margins despite well-funded opposition. Support for medical marijuana extends well beyond the traditionally libertarian Southwest. A recent survey of the American public by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that 85% of the American population supports making marijuana legally available to seriously ill people. Not wanting to let the people have the last word, the Clinton administration quickly decided to impose a de facto veto on these referendums.