SCIENTISTS TO TEST STORIED USES OF MARIJUANA AS MEDICINE

SAN DIEGO -- 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.

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

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 pot.

"We talked about it a lot," says Dr. Igor Grant, the psychiatrist who
heads the new center. "Marijuana is such a polarizing name. We don't
want this institute to be caught in the crossfire between proponents
and antagonists. Ultimately, if cannabis drugs become medicine, they
will almost certainly be known by that name, not marijuana."

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.

The medical marijuana movement began in earnest in 1996, when
California passed a statewide referendum intended to make it legal.
Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington adopted similar
laws, and Colorado and Nevada joined them in the November election.

"I was just so surprised at these policy decisions being made with so
little scientific information," says Margaret Haney of Columbia
University. "I'm not against the use of medical marijuana. There's
just no data about its efficacy."

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. Although the
drug almost certainly helps ease nausea, there is no research showing
how it stacks up against highly effective anti-nausea drugs developed
in the past 15 years.

* Stopping weight loss. Marijuana clearly improves appetite. However,
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 victims 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 AIDS
patients with 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 with AIDS are already using it, since there is
no other good treatment.