MARIJUANA AND COMMON SENSE

THE SUPREME Court's decision Monday that there is no "medical necessity"
exception to the nation's drug laws that allows the distribution of
"medical marijuana" is clearly correct.

The fact that certain states have liberalized their own drug laws to permit
medical uses of marijuana has no effect on federal law, under which
distribution of pot is a crime.

Drug buyers' clubs that sprang up in California following the state's
passage of a medical marijuana referendum were therefore operating
illegally, and the Justice Department was within its rights to shut them
down. The legal question here is easy.

The harder question is what federal policy ought to look like with respect
to marijuana's potential medicinal qualities.

Neither side seems to be approaching this debate with patients' interests
foremost.

The movement for medical marijuana is, for many, a stalking horse for a
broader liberalization of drug policy.

These advocates overstate the ostensible medical benefits of smoking
marijuana to establish a foothold in law for the notion that marijuana
smoking ought to be legal.

But those who want to legalize marijuana ought to make the case on its merits.

Some of the active components of marijuana -- THC and other agents known as
cannabinoids -- are likely effective in treating chronic pain, nausea from
chemotherapy or appetite suppression from AIDS. THC is available by
prescription orally.

But there is at least anecdotal evidence that certain terminal cancer and
AIDS patients don't respond well to it or to other standard therapies but
do respond to marijuana.

There is no compelling reason for government policy to be inflexible toward
them. Compassionate use policies have allowed patients access to numerous
unapproved therapies involving promising but unproven chemical agents --
including, at one time, marijuana. Where other treatments have failed
patients and their doctors are willing to certify that they believe
marijuana could offer relief, there ought to be a way for them to receive
the drug without the threat -- however theoretical -- of federal criminal
prosecution.