STUDY: POT SHOWS PROMISE IN TREATING HIV-RELATED PAIN

San Francisco Research Showed The Smoked Drug Worked As Medication In
A Carefully Controlled Study

SAN FRANCISCO -- Smoking marijuana eased HIV-related pain in some
patients in a small study that nevertheless represented one of the
few rigorous attempts to find out if the drug has medicinal benefits.

The Bush administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy
quickly sought to shoot holes in the experiment.

The study, conducted at San Francisco General Hospital from 2003 to
2005 and published Monday in the journal Neurology, involved 50
patients suffering from HIV-related foot pain known as peripheral
neuropathy. No drugs are specifically approved to treat that pain.

Three times daily for nearly a week, the patients smoked marijuana
cigarettes machine-rolled at the National Institute of Drug Abuse,
the only legal source for the drug recognized by the federal government.

Half the patients received marijuana, while the other 25 received
placebo cigarettes that lacked the drug's active ingredient,
tetrahydrocannabinol. Scientists said the study was the first one
published that used a comparison group, which is generally considered
the gold standard for scientific research.

Thirteen patients who received marijuana told doctors their pain
eased by at least a third after smoking pot, while only six of those
smoking placebos said likewise. The marijuana smokers reported an
average pain reduction of 34 percent, double the drop reported by the
placebo smokers.

"These results provide evidence that there is measurable medical
benefit to smoking cannabis for these patients," said Dr. Donald
Abrams, the University of California, San Francisco professor who led
the study.

Dr. Mark Ware, a researcher at McGill University in Montreal
conducting similar tests, defended Abrams' study as sound and
statistically reliable.

The study is one of the few human tests in a research field nearly
devoid of federal funding.