TRIAL RUN PLANNED ON DISPENSING MARIJUANA

Officials Watching San Mateo County, Host Of New Study

When the first bundles of government marijuana from a University of
Mississippi farm begin arriving early next year, San Mateo County will
become the first place in the country to test the practicality of doling
out marijuana to outpatient AIDS patients to ease their suffering.

It is, as its head investigator, Dr. Dennis Israelski, described it, a
study of a process. Rather than a study of how marijuana would be regulated
and how effective it is as a treatment, the program is meant to lay
groundwork for future studies on regulation.

Admittedly dry stuff, but one that could eventually become the foundation
of the legal growth, distribution and medicinal prescription of marijuana.

Many cancer, AIDS and glaucoma patients already use marijuana, often bought
illegally on the street. California and half a dozen other states have
passed measures to allow the drug's medicinal use if prescribed by a
physician. But there are few legal sources.

Israelski, the county's head clinical researcher, will oversee the
three-month trial in which marijuana cigarettes will be given to 60 HIV and
AIDS patients who suffer from a disorder that causes numbness and pain.

Doling out up to five marijuana cigarettes a day to the patients and then
collecting the butts as evidence they were smoked, the program's
researchers will monitor and survey the patients to see if they adhere to
the program's rules. Will patients sell or give away some of their supply?
Will they supplement the relatively weak marijuana with stronger street
pot? Will the use of the drug lead to abuse of other illegal drugs? Half of
the patients, those who have been regularly using marijuana before the
study, must agree not to smoke marijuana at all for the first six weeks of
the program. Will these patients abstain?

Israelski will also monitor whether the patients using the drug gain
appetite and, thusly, weight, as they smoke. The doctor will also survey
the patients about whether the drug soothes pain.

After the 12 weeks are up, Israelski and his team will do follow-up
research with the patients for another nine months.

But Israelski said this study was not intended to comprehensively test the
effectiveness of marijuana as a treatment. There were too few people, too
little time and not enough county money to do that, he said.

"Before the world goes too far down the road with trials, we want to make
sure prescribing marijuana will be feasible," he said.

Other studies have showed that marijuana can relieve pain, nausea and
muscle spasms for people who suffer from a wide variety of illnesses.
Already the county is in the federal pipeline for approval to begin a
similar pilot program with people who are suffering from cancer.

When the Department of Drug Enforcement became the last to sign off on the
test Wednesday and gave the county its official clinical trial number, San
Mateo's three-year effort to study the drug budded.

In 1996, Californians passed Proposition 215, legalizing possession,
cultivation and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. But lawmakers have
tussled on how to grow, prescribe and distribute it.

The proposition was the impetus for the county to forge its groundbreaking
path to the current study.

Supervisor Mike Nevin, a former San Francisco police officer, has been one
of the program's main proponents.

Nevin said his conversations with the late Joni Commons, deputy director of
the county health department in San Mateo, convinced him that the drug
should be studied. Commons, who had breast cancer, said smoking marijuana
eased the pain and nausea caused by chemotherapy. She died in 1998.

"She was the one that satisfied me that this worked," Nevin said. "I'm not
in favor of legalization of marijuana or any drugs, but why wouldn't we
make this available to people who are suffering?"

At first, Nevin said he believed the best way to provide the marijuana was
to use plants seized in law enforcement raids. But experts explained to him
that seized marijuana came in widely varying quality and strength.

He then found out that the government was growing its own. The University
of Mississippi grows the government-approved marijuana on about two acres
at a secure site.

After budgeting $500,000 to the study three years ago, the county awaited
government approval.

"The government will be watching us closely on this one," Nevin said.