EASING OF MARIJUANA BAN URGED

SACRAMENTO - A large and respected association of physicians is
calling on the federal government to ease its strict ban on marijuana
as medicine and hasten research into the drug's therapeutic uses.

The American College of Physicians, a 124,000-member group that is the
nation's largest for doctors of internal medicine, contends that the
debate over marijuana legalization has obscured good science that has
demonstrated the benefits and medicinal promise of cannabis.

In a position paper posted Thursday on its Web site, the ACP urges the
government to drop marijuana from Schedule I, a classification it
shares with illegal drugs such as LSD that are considered to have no
medicinal value.