MEDICAL MARIJUANA STUDY EXPECTED TO START IN SPRING

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Researchers in California will begin a $3 million
effort to examine the medical benefits and risks of marijuana as soon
as May.

The Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research announced Thursday the
approval of four studies that eventually will lead to guidelines for
the use of marijuana by people with HIV or multiple sclerosis.

California voters legalized the medicinal use of marijuana more than
four years ago, but the drug remains an illegal narcotic under
federal law. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear a challenge
to medical marijuana next month.

Federal officials have provided little funding for marijuana's
potential medicinal benefits, but medical marijuana legalization in
California and six other states has led the government to
increasingly call for evidence that the drug has therapeutic value.

Igor Grant, a psychiatry professor at the University of California,
San Diego, and director of the cannabis center, said unbiased
university research should answer basic questions about marijuana and
help "reset the national thermostat on this issue."

He added that he hopes the state-sponsored research announced
Thursday will lead to more ambitious, federally funded studies.

Research teams at UC San Francisco and UC San Diego will examine how
smoked marijuana affects HIV-related pain. Other studies will examine
whether pot can ease spasticity caused by multiple sclerosis, and the
drug's effect on the driving abilities of patients with AIDS or MS.

Although the scientists have the money to conduct the studies, they
do not yet have the drugs.

The only source of research-grade marijuana in the United States is a
federal farm at the University of Mississippi, and the researchers
still must get approval from agencies including the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Agency and the Food and Drug Administration to obtain the
cannabis.

Grant said federal regulators are interested in the research as long
as those conducting it are "serious people looking at serious medical
questions and not approaching it from some advocacy position."