THE ROLE OF CANNABIS - SNUFFING OUT MEDICAL MARIJUANA - THE POLITICS GOT
AHEAD OF THE SCIENCE

By Ruling Against Doobies As Legal Pain Relievers, The U.S. Supreme Court
Lit Up Debate Over Its No-Exceptions Interpretation Of The Federal
Controlled Substance Act.

All the time I've thought about the possibilities of marijuana as medicine,
I have had one person in mind. I keep seeing the face of Joni Commons, a
friend who was deputy director of San Mateo County Health Services and
battled breast cancer with great courage and grace.

I remember Joni with a classy scarf wrapped around her head after her hair
had fallen out. She told me marijuana was the only thing that gave her
relief from the constant nausea. No legal medication did anything for her,
none of the "worthy" drugs that the U.S. Supreme Court heard testimony
about before it ruled - agreeing with Congress - that "marijuana has no
medical benefits worthy of an exception."

But cannabis did help Joni - I saw it with my own eyes - and I believe it
helps lots of other people. And I believe the Supreme Court and Congress
made their decisions without the benefit, so far, of science or research
into the potential medicinal value of marijuana for treatment for all kinds
of debilitating symptoms of AIDS, cancer and chronic pain.

I know because San Mateo County has decided to do the science - an approved
clinical trial - that the federal government chose not to do. It's a
first-of-its-kind study on the feasibility of using self-administered
marijuana to determine if the drug can be effective in controlling pain
associated with AIDS.

It's been a long haul. Almost three years ago, I asked county health
officials if marijuana confiscated by police could be transferred to the
county hospital for dispensing as a treatment for pain. Having spent 27
years in law enforcement, I was no fan, and still am not, of legalizing
marijuana - it sends the wrong message to kids. But I remembered all that
marijuana in the San Francisco Police Department's Property Room. Why not,
I wondered, measure it, photograph it and then give it to doctors to
dispense, on a prescription basis, as a drug for people who need it?

Last November, we finally got the last six federal and state agencies to
sign off on the study. For the next year, using the government's own
marijuana, a control group of AIDS patients suffering from pain and
numbness in their limbs will keep a diary detailing their reactions to the
prescribed doses of marijuana. What is most important in the medical
marijuana debate right now is to find the proof, one way or the other.

Now, marijuana remains mixed up in everyone's minds with the fringe
elements of society - the beatniks, the hippies, the anti-war movement.
Congress in 1970 passed the Controlled Substance Act with marijuana
classified as a Schedule 1 drug - absurdly, right up there with opium.
(Morphine, classified as a Schedule 2 drug, is considered less dangerous
than marijuana.)

Thirty years later, the so-called "cannabis clubs" have taken an
"in-your-face" attitude, resurrecting all those drug culture images that
most of us thought were dead and buried.

Proposition 215, the basis for medical marijuana in California, was a
horribly written piece of law. It didn't address the issues of cultivation
or distribution of cannabis for medical purposes, leaving law enforcement
searching desperately for direction. Prop. 215 measured the will of
Californians on just one issue: whether medical marijuana should be legally
available to the desperately ill. But it didn't tell us how to do that, and
the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative didn't do us any favors by forcing
a Supreme Court decision.

The court didn't do us any favors either by coming down with lots of hard
rhetoric about what qualifies as a "worthy" drug before science has had a
chance to find out.

San Mateo County will go on with its study. If the results indicate
marijuana has beneficial effects for the seriously ill, perhaps then
politicians will be ready to enact laws on the basis of real science
instead of decades-old emotions.