Your view: Gierhan only interested in drug company profits
By Keith Fagin | Calgary, Alberta, Canada

After I finished reading Stan Gierhan’s letter to the Winona Daily News editor in the May 15 edition, I couldn’t help but think, “Shouldn’t Gierhan be much better informed?” More so when we consider he is “a registered pharmacist and a member of the pharmacy staff” at any hospital. His education and the position he is employed in at a hospital no less should afford him the knowledge that one medicine can’t be a cure-all for a number of medical aliments.

I personally have no medical education whatsoever, and common sense alone tells me there is no one medicine today that is a cure-all for any one aliment that humans suffer from, let alone Gierhan’s blanket statements that marinol (one pharmaceutical drug) is a cure-all for a multitude of medical aliments. Cannabis contains a lot more medicinally beneficial chemical compounds than just THC.
My next thoughts are why can state — legal, yet federally illegal — cannabis compassion clubs provide many different medical cannabis-related products, such as a different strains of cannabis for different people and different aliments? Additionally, there are a number of ways other than smoking to ingest medical cannabis that these same medical cannabis compassion clubs provide. These cannabis compassion clubs are operating at zero cost to taxpayers — very unlike the big pharmaceutical companies — even paying taxes and providing jobs in the community.

Lastly, Gierhan’s comments lead me to believe he is more interested in “pushing” expensive pharmaceutical drugs that will increase the already massive profits stuffed in to the bulging pharmacist, pharmacy and pharmaceutical industries pockets year after year.

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