USA TODAY

Today's debate is on MARIJUANA AS MEDICINE

and whether its use should be approved for

some patients

OUR VIEW - The federal government should make marijuana availabla as a medical treatment.

If you're wasting away from the ravages of AIDS or chemotherapy, there's a drug that can help you.

Just one catch: Even if you're dying, the government won't let you have it. Despite mountains of evidence that marijuana helps when other drugs don't, the Drug Enforcement Administration continues to classify it as dangerous and having no redeeming medical qualities.

Now, only 12 people in the contry can get marijuana legally. They are the last remnants of a now-defunct federal program that supplies government grown marijuana to the extremely ill.

Valerie Corral isn't one of the lucky ones. Today, she will try to convince a Santa Cruz, California, Superior Court that the marijuana she was arrested for growing was used to ease her severe epileptic seizures when presription drugs failed.

Such cases are tragic and unnecessary. Six studies funded by the Food and Drug Administration found that marijuana helps people cope with the violent nausea that often accompanies cancer treatment. Other studies have shown that it eases muscle spasms that are part of multiple sclerosis and epilespy, Marijuana revives appatites in AIDS patients, which keeps them from wasting away. And it relieves eye pressure that causes blindness in glaucoma patients.

Many doctors agree. A survey of cancer doctors by two Harvard researches found 44% had advised at least one patient to smike marijuana.

Thirty-five states have decided to fight DEA's backward view with laws of their own. The latest, in Massachusetts, would allow sick people to obtain marijuana by prescription, either from state-seized supplies that have been found safe or by growing their own.

Such laws are good symbolism, but they have no power unless federal law changes or a court upholds them.

A better step is for the federal government itself to approve marijuana as a prescription drug for limited medical conditions. One way to get the ball rolling would be to put marijuana on the fast track for approval as an AIDS drug.

Sick people should not have to become outlaws to relieve their suffering.