A SHOT FROM THE HIP AT THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT

As readers of this column know, I advocate changing our laws regarding the
use of marijuana as medicine.

I support an effort to bring an initiated act before the voters in November
that would allow physicians to prescribe marijuana for patients whom they
think it would help. The process has barely begun.

The petition campaign only recently began in northwest Arkansas, and it
won't begin in central Arkansas for another week. There has hardly been a
word of public debate.

So I was surprised to learn that the Arkansas Department of Health has
already announced its opposition to any change in the current law.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported the health department's statement in
its northwest Arkansas editions. "Scientific research has shown marijuana to
be harmful to a person's brain, heart, lungs, immune system, memory,
perception, judgment, and motivation," the statement said. "Use of marijuana
as a beneficial medicine projects a false and fraudulent message
contradicting current scientific knowledge and research." Did I say I was
surprised?

Flabbergasted would be more to the point.

While the statement sounded familiar-we have been hearing that same litany
of dangers for decades--what struck me was that whoever wrote it seemed to
have been unaware of reports issued in the past few years, by a number of
prestigious scientific institutions, that directly oppose the department's
position. I called the department on Tuesday morning, seeking to speak with
the statement's author, but the agency's spokesman, Dan McFadden, was out,
and it was mid-afternoon before he called back. I explained that I wanted to
ask whoever had issued the statement about a number of reports favoring
marijuana as medicine-particularly the one that was issued last March by the
National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine.

That report, which was requested by the White House, is considered the most
comprehensive analysis of the medical literature on marijuana to date. Its
conclusion was stated in very plain terms: "Scientific data indicate the
potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs for pain relief, control of
nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation," the IOM report said. At a
press conference announcing the results, one of the lead investigators
added, "For patients who do not respond well to other medications,
short-term marijuana use appears to be suitable in treating conditions like
chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, or the wasting caused by AIDS."

I wanted to ask the author of our own health department's statement how its
review of the science could come to such a different conclusion. I also
wanted to ask what the statement's author thought about the positions, taken
by such respected bodies as the American Public Health Association, the
National Association for Public Health Policy, the American Academy of
Family Physicians, the Federation of American Scientists, the Lymphoma
Foundation of America, and the New England Journal of Medicine, all of which
have announced their support for the use of medical marijuana.

McFadden said he would check.

But getting an answer was not to be easy. McFadden called back, not with the
name of the author, but to say that the source the agency had used for its
statement was the National Association of State Controlled Substances
Authorities. I said I'd never heard of it. (McFadden said it had a website,
but a search for that name turned up nothing.) I asked, "Can't I just speak
directly to the person who issued the department's statement?" McFadden said
he'd have to call back. A couple of phone calls later, I still didn't have a
name, but McFadden assured me that the agency was "working on some
additional research," which they'd be able to provide for me on Wednesday.

I said that that was past my deadline and that, anyway, I didn't understand
why more research would be needed if the agency had researched its decision
before announcing its opposition. It was after 4:30, state quitting time,
when McFadden called back again.

This time he acknowledged that the statement had been released through the
office of the department's director, Dr. Fay Boozman. He said that it was
based on a department policy developed in March 1998, and that, since the
statement was released, "media" had "brought up additional questions,"
prompting the department to conduct additional research "to make sure that
there was nothing we weren't aware of when we issued our statement." I asked
if that meant that the department might consider changing its position,
based on more recent reviews of the science.

McFadden couldn't say. I thanked him and promised to talk again on
Wednesday, when the "additional research" would be ready.

Will the Arkansas Department of Health stand with or against the National
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine?

Stay tuned…