TIME TO ALLOW PATIENTS THEIR POT

BOSTON - 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 its people who can
use marijuana as medicine. As of this month, the terminally ill and those
with chronic diseases from cancer to AIDS to MS 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 terminal or painful illness should
be allowed access to marijuana when a doctor says it may help. Our own
Supreme Court has moved in exactly the opposite direction. In May, our
Supremes ruled on narrow grounds that federal drug law allows no exception
for medical marijuana.

So the Canadians have implicitly recognized that marijuana has uses as well
as abuses. But our government supports the idea that marijuana has no
medicinal value worth the social risks.

Our law not only differs from Canada's, It's 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.

Is anyone hallucinating?

Marijuana has a medical history that goes way back beyond the time when the
straight-laced Queen Victoria took it for menstrual cramps. It was used
widely in the West for pain and sleep, until aspirin and barbiturates came
along. It was demonized in the 1930s with "reefer madness" propaganda and
in the 1960s when Haight-Ashbury was covered in a stoned haze.

Today, 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. Many doctors
still wait for scientific proof, the double- blind studies that have become
the gold standard of research. But no such studies existed when penicillin
or even aspirin were accepted.

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.

The Canadian system has its own critics: doctors who worry about being
gatekeepers and marijuana activists who think there are still too many
hurdles. But we are in a marijuana muddle.

The feds aren't likely to crack down on the terminally ill, nor are law
enforcers eager to rip joints out of the hands of AIDS patients. Asa
Hutchinson, the Bush pick to head the Drug Enforcement Administration, said
prosecuting the medical marijuana dealers wasn't "a priority." But
meanwhile, patients are using drug dealers as doctors. And a treatment for
suffering is a crime.

Is that a whiff of sanity from cross the border? Or just a contact high?