CANADA'S MARIJUANA LAW MAKES MORE SENSE

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

The Canadian government just has 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 either can 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.

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.

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.

Many doctors still wait for 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? We're seeing America's war on drugs being taken to an extreme that
begins to make no sense."

Politicians are so afraid of appearing soft on drugs that 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 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. 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?