U.S. SHOULD TAKE CUE FROM CANADA

And now from our northern neighbors, the allegedly staid Canadians, a new
antidote to our reefer madness.

The Canadian government has just increased the number of people who can use
marijuana as medicine.

As of this month, the terminally ill and those with chronic diseases...

And now from our northern neighbors, the allegedly staid Canadians, a new
antidote to our reefer madness. The Canadian government has just increased
the number of people who can use marijuana as medicine.

As of this month, the terminally ill and those with chronic diseases from
cancer to AIDS to multiple sclerosis can turn their back yards into their
medicine cabinets. With the approval of a doctor, they can either grow it
or get it free from the government, which is paying a company to nurture
the plants in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba. Where does
that leave us? U.S. citizens, who routinely cross the border for cheap
prescription drugs, won't be allowed access to the Manitoba motherload. But
if Canadians can't export their medical marijuana, it's time for us to
import their policy. The northern light on the subject comes in the wake of
a Canadian Supreme Court ruling that any patient suffering from a terminal
or painful illness should be allowed access to marijuana when a doctor says
it may help. Our own Supreme Court in May ruled on narrow grounds that
federal drug law allows no exception for medical marijuana. The Canadians
have implicitly recognized that marijuana has uses as well as abuses.

Our government supports the idea that marijuana has no medicinal value
worth the social risks. Our law is on a collision course with the policies
in nine states Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine,
Oregon, Nevada and Washington. More to the point, it's on a collision
course with patients who are looking for relief without looking for trouble.

Thousands of patients from paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould to your
neighbor's grandmother have reported on pot's value in relieving the nausea
of chemotherapy or improving the appetite of an AIDS patient. The few
studies available show mixed results.

A recent survey in a British medical journal reported that marijuana was no
better than other available drugs for severe pain and somewhat better for
nausea.

But these were marijuana-based medications, not smoked marijuana.

The patients still preferred the marijuana medications by a large margin.
Marijuana, like most drugs, has side effects, although worrying about the
effects of smoking on the lungs of a terminally ill patient seems a bit absurd.

One of the other side effects is what medical researchers label "euphoria,"
or in street parlance, a "high." But as Leonard Glantz, a Boston University
professor of health law asks, "If someone is terminally ill, and they can
eat and be euphoric, why is that bad?" Here we get to the heart of the
matter: the drug war in which marijuana has played a starring role with
700,000 arrests in 1998. There is a fear that if grandma can smoke it
legally for her health, granddaughter will smoke it to get high. "We're
seeing America's war on drugs being taken to an extreme that begins to make
no sense," says Glantz. Politicians are so afraid of appearing soft on
drugs they can't draw any distinctions. Compare this to morphine.

We don't allow morphine on the street but we permit it in the doctor's
arsenal for the treatment of pain. Imagine the uproar if we made morphine
illegal.

There is no logic in treating marijuana differently.