WE MUST STOP THE WAR ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

On Thursday, in dozens of cities and towns across the United States,
something remarkable will happen:

Thousands of people battling cancer, AIDS and other terrible illnesses,
their families, friends and supporters will deliver "cease and desist"
orders to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to stop it from
blocking their access to a needed medication.

Their request is so simple and so obviously correct that it is
heartbreaking that people - many very seriously ill - will be forced to
deliver their message this way, with many risking arrest.

But as individuals who have found that medical marijuana relieves their
symptoms when conventional medicines fail, they feel they have no choice:

The federal government continues to fight an irrational war against medical
marijuana, and the sick and struggling are its principal victims.

Make no mistake: The government's demonization of marijuana is irrational.

When I first published a study in the journal Science on marijuana's
physical and psychological effects back in 1968, I was certain that medical
use of the plant would be legal within five years.

This is, after all, a medicinal plant for which no fatal dose has ever been
established and that has been used in folk medicine for millennia.

Like all medicines, marijuana has its drawbacks, particularly in smoked
form. It is not a panacea.

I support research into safer delivery systems, such as low- temperature
vaporizers or inhalers, which offer the fast action of inhaled medicine
without the irritants found in smoke.

Still, I have seen in my own studies that marijuana is less toxic than most
pharmaceutical drugs in current use and is certainly helpful for some
patients, including those with wasting syndromes, chronic muscle spasticity
and intractable nausea.

Unfortunately, the only legal substitute available now - a prescription
pill containing a synthetic THC, marijuana's main psychoactive component -
is not good enough for many patients.

I hear regularly from patients that the pill does not work as well as the
natural herb and causes much greater intoxication.

I am far from alone in this view. The Institute of Medicine, in a report
commissioned by the White House "drug czar," concluded in 1999 that there
is convincing evidence of marijuana's value in relieving nausea, weight
loss and other symptoms caused by diseases such as AIDS, cancer and
multiple sclerosis, as well as by the harsh drugs often used to treat these
conditions.

The institute concluded that, for some patients, the potential benefits
clearly outweigh the risks, and that ways should be found to make marijuana
available to them.

As a physician, I am frustrated that I cannot prescribe marijuana for
patients who might benefit from it. At the very least, I would like to be
able to refer them to a safe, reliable, quality-controlled source.

But both the Clinton and Bush administrations have pursued a policy that
the New England Journal of Medicine has called "misguided, heavy- handed
and inhumane."

They have declined to act on the institute's recommendation and have
conducted a series of raids on medical marijuana cooperatives operating
legally under California law, depriving patients of precisely the sort of
safe, secure source of medicine they need.

Sick people are forced to turn to street sources or simply suffer without
relief.

So it comes to this: Desperately ill people, their friends, families and
loved ones will stand outside DEA offices, pleading with their government
not to deprive them of medicine that relieves their suffering.

It should never have been necessary, and one can only hope that the
administration and Congress will listen.