MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Our View:

It's time to find out if marijuana has any medical value.

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision on the medicinal use of marijuana
won't be the last word on this issue.

The court recently ruled 8-0 that the federal law making marijuana
illegal doesn't have an exception for medical purposes.

People suffering from cancer, AIDS and other diseases have long
maintained that smoking marijuana alleviates pain, nausea and
vomiting, and stimulates their appetite.

"I am not going to let my children watch me die," Angel McClary of
Oakland, Calif., told The Associated Press after the court's ruling
was announced. "If that is wrong so be it." McClary uses marijuana to
help treat an inoperable brain tumor and seizures.

As we write this, people in eight states (Arizona, Alaska,
California, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have
voted to allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, and in a
ninth state, Hawaii, the legislature passed a law allowing it.

That increased acceptance of medical marijuana raises an interesting
question: What do people in those nine states know, or believe they
know, about the properties of marijuana that they were willing to put
themselves in conflict with federal drug laws?

Can we separate fact from fiction on this issue? Unproven or strictly
anecdotal evidence of marijuana's effectiveness in treating the
symptoms of disease is certainly the latter. What's needed are more
studies of the medicinal uses of marijuana. The Supreme Court's
ruling doesn't prevent that from happening, and it's important to
answer the questions, once and for all. In 1999, the Institute of
Medicine, which advises Congress, also called for more study of
medical marijuana.

Studying medical marijuana isn't being "soft on drugs," it's a matter
of respecting what the states have done on this issue and how far
apart the people in those states have grown from the federal
government.

The people in those nine states have demonstrated a collective
opinion on the medical value of marijuana that's markedly different
from federal law. It's time to find out if they're right.