MARIJUANA TESTED FOR BENEFITS AS MEDICINE

Studies Take Up Debate Over Drug's Usefulness

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Maybe the smoke is about to clear in the debate over
medical marijuana.

Few ideas, it seems, are so firmly held by the public and so doubted by the
medical profession as the healing powers of pot. But at last, researchers
are tiptoeing into this field, hoping to prove once and for all whether
marijuana really is good medicine.

To believers, marijuana's benefits are already beyond discussion: Pot eases
pain, settles the stomach, builds weight and steadies spastic muscles. And
that's hardly the beginning. They speak of relief from PMS, glaucoma,
itching, insomnia, arthritis, depression, childbirth, attention deficit
disorder and ringing in the ears.

Marijuana is a powerful and needed medicine, they say, tragically withheld
by misplaced phobia about drug addiction.

However, the drive to legalize medical marijuana is based almost entirely
on the testimonials of sick people who swear it makes them feel better.
Those stories are not the kind of dispassionate experimentation that drives
medical thinking.

"We lack evidence that there is something unique about marijuana, other
than an impressive number of anecdotal reports," says Dr. Billy Martin,
chief of pharmacology at the Medical College of Virginia.

In the medical establishment's view, the buzz about marijuana is little
more than that. Pot has many effects on the body, including some that are
probably worthwhile. But does it substantially relieve human suffering,
they ask? And if so, is it any better than medicines already in drugstores?

For the first time in at least two decades, marijuana is being put to the
test as a medicine. Scientists say they will try to hold marijuana to the
same standards as any other drug, to settle whether its benefits match its
mystique.

Given marijuana's recreational uses and abuses, people in this new field
are understandably eager to come across as serious scientists experimenting
with a serious medicine. (Even marijuana's usual reason to be - the high -
is dismissed as a mere side effect, and probably an unwanted one at that.)

One way to buff up a pharmaceutical's raffish image - especially one that's
a drug in more than one sense of the word - is to call it something else.
When the University of California at San Diego started the country's first
institute to study the medical uses of marijuana this year, they named it
the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research. Cannabis is the botanical term
for marijuana.

"We talked about it a lot," says Dr. Igor Grant, the psychiatrist who heads
the new center. "Marijuana is such a polarizing name."

The center will give out $9 million over the next three years to California
researchers - enough to underwrite six or seven marijuana studies a year,
each involving between 20 and 50 patients.

At least four other studies of the medical effects of marijuana are
planned. Three are sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, the
other by California's San Mateo County.

Most of the new research will probably focus on four main uses of marijuana
that seem to hold the greatest promise:

Relieving severe nausea and vomiting caused by cancer chemotherapy. This is
probably marijuana's best-known medical use. While the drug almost
certainly helps ease nausea, there is no research showing how it stacks up
against highly effective anti-nausea drugs developed over the past 15 years.

Stopping weight loss. Marijuana clearly improves appetite. But the drug has
not been adequately tested in people who are unintentionally losing weight,
such as those with AIDS or cancer.

Treating muscle spasticity conditions, including multiple sclerosis. Many
patients say it helps, and some animal research backs up the idea. But is
it better than standard medicines?

Easing pain. Researchers especially want to test it on people with AIDS who
have peripheral neuropathy, numbness and pain in the feet that afflicts
between 20 percent and 30 percent with the disease. Animal studies suggest
marijuana may be a mild to moderate painkiller, and many people with AIDS
are already using it, as there is no other good treatment.