From: enadelmann@sorosny.org

Tue Oct 14 02:26:57 1997

Subject: NY Times: Medical Marijuana Is Political

Sender: owner-tlc-activist@soros.org

Mon, 13 Oct 1997

New York Times

by ANTHONY LEWIS

MEDICINE AND POLITICS

BOSTON -- The medical use of marijuana remains a poisonous idea in

political Washington. Williams Weld's support for it was one of Senator Jesse Helms's stated reasons for blocking his nomination as Ambassador to Mexico, and no one in Washington wanted even to discuss it.

But in the scientific and medical world, there is increasing support for the use of marijuana as an aid to treatment -- or at least for open-minded testing.

The National Institutes of Health in August issued a report by an

eight-member committee calling for N.I.H. tests of marijuana's efficacy in four medical areas. The chairman of the committee, William Beaver of Georgetown University, said: "For at least some potential indications marijuana looks promising enough to recommend that there be controlled studies."

In The New England Medical Journal of Aug. 7 a strongly worded article by George J. Annas condemned political interference in the question -- in particular, the Clinton Administration's threat to prosecute any California doctors advising marijuana use after the state's voters overwhelmingly approved the idea in a referendum last year.

"Doctors are not the enemy in the 'war' on drugs," Mr. Annas said;

"Ignorance and hypocrisy are. Research should go on, and while it does, marijuana should be available to all patients who need it to help them undergo treatment for life-threatening illnesses."

The best popular discussion I have seen of the scientific-medical issues appeared in The Economist on Aug. 16. It described four kinds of illnesses in which patients have found marijuana helpful.

One is glaucoma. The increased pressure in the eyeball that the disease causes is eased by smoking marijuana. Indeed, the Food and Drug Administration allowed its use when other glaucoma treatments were unavailing until 1991 -- when it may have given way to anti-marijuana hysteria.

A second medical area is neurological diseases. Sufferers from multiple sclerosis, for instance, find relief in marijuana from burning sensations in their arms and legs.

Third, there is what The Economist called "marijuana's well-known ability to stimulate the appetite." This is reportedly of crucial help to AIDS sufferers.

Finally, The Economist said, marijuana is "of undoubted benefit in

suppressing the nausea suffered by many people on anti-cancer therapy."

One patient who reported being greatly helped in that way is Prof. Stephen Jay Gould, the esteemed Harvard paleontologist, who was driven to near despair by nausea when under treatment for abdominal mesothelioma. (He is one of the first people, ever, to survive the disease.) Marijuana, he said, "was the greatest boost I received in all my year of treatment, and surely the most important effect upon my eventual cure."

President Clinton's drug czar, retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, has scoffed at the idea that marijuana is medically indicated. It is unnecessary, he wrote last month, because its active ingredient, THC, is synthesized and available as a prescription drug, Marinol. "The argument that this chemical needs to be smoked .=A0.=A0. doesn't make sense."

But numerous patients who have tried Marinol and found it ineffective report having benefited from marijuana. It may be that the vapor form of THC is more readily absorbed by the body, or that the smoke contains other ingredients not yet known.

Disquiet is growing more broadly in the medical community about the punitive nature of American drug policy. In July a new organization was formed called Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy. Dr. Lonnie Bristow, former president of the American Medical Association, said: "The current criminal justice-driven approach is not reducing, let alone controlling, drug abuse in America."

And last month another new group of scientists, officials and drug experts called for discussion of drug policy in practical terms -- what actually works. Open debate is now inhibited, they said, by the treatment of critics as traitors.

The Economist put it succinctly in its article on medical use of marijuana. "Some drugs are known to induce paranoia through chemical action," it said.

"Marijuana, it seems, can do it through political action."