THE NEW YORK TIMES "National" Sunday, December 1, 1996

DESPITE MARIJUANA FUROR, 8 USERS GET IT FROM THE GOVERNMENT

By the New York Times

The passage of voter initiatives in California and Arizona allowing the medical use of marijuana has caused renewed interest in a little-known Government program at the University of Mississippi that supplies marijuana for medicinal purposes to eight people across the country. "There has definitely been more public attention to medical marijuana," said Allen St. Pierre, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. "But the increased attention has been bittersweet because there has been so much misinformation on the subject. We get so many calls when people hear of the program and want to know they can apply for eight and not for others." Under a contract with the National Institute on Drugs Abuse, the University of Mississippi has grown marijuana for 26 years for research. It is the only legal marijuana plot in the country. Twenty years ago, the University began supplying a select group of patients with marijuana under a separate program, overseen by the Food and Drug Admini

stration, to provide "compassionate care" to relieve symptoms from diseases like multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, glaucoma and rare genetic diseases. Even though Federal Law classifies marijuana as an illegal narcotic with no recognized therapeutic value, the university's garden is supplying the eight patients with up to 300 marijuana cigarettes a month. The program was set up in 1976 when Robert Randall, a glaucoma patient, won a court ruling in Washington that said marijuana was a medical necessity for his condition. The program stopped taking new patients in 1992, when the Department of Health and Human Services began its official policy of disavowing marijuana as a legitimate form of treatment. Five of the original 13 patients have subsequently died. One of the those patients, Corinne Millet, a 65-years-old woman who has glaucoma, says smoking marijuana has saved her sight. After two operations and "trying every drop on the market," Ms. Millet was told that there was nothing that could prevent her from goi

ng blind. Ms. Millet says that prognosis was proved wrong on Oct. 14, 1989, when she was accepted into the Federal program that provides her with five marijuana cigarettes a day, which she says has allowed her to keep her vision. Although the new state laws allow doctors to prescribe marijuana in Arizona and to recommend its use in California, Federal law makes it illegal for patients to get it. By Federal definition, marijuana is a controlled substance with a high potential for abuse and no medical value. Proponents of legalizing marijuana for medical purposes say that seems illogical when forms of cocaine and morphine can be prescribed despite the risk of abuse. The very existence of the compassionate-care program contradicts Federal policy and puts the Food and Administration in an "awkward position," said Don McLearn, a spokesman for the agency. Despite its name, the Compassionate Investigative New Drug program, known as a compassionate I.N.D., is not a research study intended to evaluate the medical val

ue of marijuana. "It is not a clinical trial," Mr. McLearn said. "There was never any intent of using reports from the compassionate I.N.D.'s to reach approval for the drug." In fact, the reports submitted regularly by the participants' doctors are used only to evaluate whether to keep them in the program. The reports have no effect on a policy that discounts the medical value of smoking marijuana, Mr. McLearn said.