By NORML Publications Director Paul Armentano

Marijuana is medicine. It has been used for thousands of years to treat a wide veriety of aliments. MArijuana was legal in the United States and prominent in the pharmacopoeia unitl 1937, when possession and use of marijuana was outlawed by the federal

government. Today, eight patients receive marijuana legally from the government; for all other Americans who could benefit from its therapeutic value, it remains a forbidden medicine. The passage of Proposition 215 in California, the Medical Marijuana

Initiative, would be a first step in amending this grievous and unnecessary crisis.

Contrary to popular belief, there have been hundreds of studies on the medical uses of cannabis since its introduction to western medicine in the mid-ninenteenth century. The established medical use of smoked marijuana is as an anti-nauseant for cancer

chemotherapy. During the 1980s, smoked marijuana was shown to be an effective anti-emetic in six different state-sponsored clinical studies involving nearly 1,000 paitens. For the majority of these patients, smoked marijuana proved more effective than

both conventional prescription anti-nauseants and oral THC (marketed today as the synthetic pill, Marinol). Fore example, in a 1988 study by Dr, Vincent Vinciguerra published in the "New York state Jopurnal of Medicine", 78 percent of patients who had

shown no improvement with standard anti-emetics responded favorably to marijuana. Vinciguerra concluded that the results of the pilot study "demonstrate that inhalation marijuana is an effective therapy for the treatment of nausea and vomiting due to

cancer chemotherapy. "Similar findings were noted in state-sponsored studies in New Mexico, Georgia, Tennessee, Michigan, and CAlifornia. Currently, many oncologists are recommending marijuana to their patients despite its prohibition.

In addition to its usefulness as an anti-emetic, there exists evidence -- both scientific and anecdotal -- that marijuana is a valuable aid in reducing pain and suffering for patients with a variety of other serius ailments, ailments, and that it is less

toxic and colstly than the conventional medicines for which it may be sustained. For example, marijuana alleviates the nausea, vomiting, and the loss of appetite caused by the AIDS wasting syndrome and by treatment with AZT and other drugs without

accellerating the rate at which HIV positive individuals develop clinical AIDS or other illnesses. Reportedly, 75 percent of the 12,000 memebers of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers's Club were patients with AIDS (PWAs) and a recent survey of

HIV-positive patients in Australia found that one-quarter were using marijuana therapeutically.

It is general accepted -- by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and others -- that marijuana reduces intraocular pressure (IOP) in patients from glaucoma, the leading cause of blindness in the United States. This was the first shown in a series of

experiments by Robert S. Hepler of UCLA, stemming from research aimed at finding out whether marijuana dilated pupils. Hepler found a "statistically significant" drop in IOP in 429 subjects treated with marijuana or THC, 29 of which showed continued

benefits during 94 days of treatment with no sings of tolerance. Currently, three of the eight patients who receive medicinal marijuana legally use it to treat glaucoma.

There also exists historical evidence that marijuana is effective in treating a variety of spastic conditions suche as multiple sclerosis, paraplegia, epilepsy, and quadriplegia. In the book "Marijuana the Forbidden Medicine", Dr. Lester Grinspoon of

Harvard Medical School describes several case histories of patients suffering from multiple slerosis and other disorders whose condition improved ahile they smoked marijuana and deteriorated after they stopped smoking. In addition, a number of animal

studies have supported marijuana's ability to suppress convulsions. These studies specifically indicate cannabiol, a non-psychoactive ingredient fo marijuana unavailabel in Marinol, to be a potent anti-convulsant. thsi latter fact was recently reaffirmed

by the government's premiere marijuana expert, Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly of the Marijuana Project at the University of Mississippi, who stated during an interview with the "Journal of the International Hemp

Association" that, " CBD (cannabidiol) is famous for its anti-convulsant activity". ElSohly concluded that "There is no question about the use of cannabis for certain conditions, It does have a history. It does have utility."

Marijuana is also used to treat those who seek relief from chronic pain. Historically, marijuana was used as an analgesic from ancient times through the nineteenth century. This usage declined with the introduction of faster acting more potent, yet

sometimes addicting, opiates suche as morphine. However, anecdotal reports demonstrate that some patients currently receive their most effective pain relief using marijuana. Limited scientific studies on nearly 100 patients have shown marijuana to be a

potent analgesic.

Evidence of marijuana's medical value has existed for centuries and has been validated by numerous studies, researches, committees, health organizations, and even the Drug Enforcement Agency's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L.Young, who in 1988

declared marijuana to be "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. "Unfortunately, patients who could benefit fom marijuana's therapeutic value have been held hostage by a federal government that continues to treat the issue as

political football. American medical patients deserve better and Proposition 215 is a genuine and encouraging step to addrress their needs.

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