Among many other duties along a 20-year career in the Navy, I was a urinalysis coordinator. I cannot speak concerning the accuracy of the research mentioned in your article, but I do know this: the military has a zero-tolerance policy towards drugs, including marijuana. If someone “pops positive”, that person will be discharged, even weeks or days before that person was set to retire (yes, I’ve seen that, too). On the way to being discharged, one goes through Commanding Officer’s Non-Judicial Punishment, and that is not fun for anyone involved.

As a result, most in the military are flat-out paranoid when it comes to what can cause us to pop positive. We look askance at poppy-seed muffins (yes, eat way too many poppy seeds and you’ll pop positive), and the same thing goes for anything that might render the same career-ending result.

All that might seem like outright tyranny to most, but I served both before and after the advent of urinalysis tests, and I saw the difference firsthand — and it’s FAR better now. In fact, the adoption of urinalysis tests had more to do with safety than with crime, since autopsies showed that nearly half of the sailors killed in a flight-deck mishap in 1981 on the USS Nimitz were found to have marijuana in their systems. Imagine living in an environment where illicit drugs is not a major factor — that’s the military today.

So I respectfully ask that you edit your otherwise well-written article to include a disclaimer discouraging all active-duty and reserve military personnel from even trying such products unless under the strict supervision of a licensed doctor (which is allowed as long as the individual’s command is notified).

P.S. please understand that I don’t write this as a criticism of your article, but only to prevent any military personnel from reading your article and getting the impression that it’s worth the risk to try such products without being under a doctor’s supervision and with the command’s foreknowledge.