SCIENTISTS ANNOUNCE STUDIES ON MEDICINAL VALUE OF POT

More than four years after California voters legalized medical marijuana,
researchers announced Thursday the first batch of studies planned under a
$3 million state effort to determine what value pot has as medicine.

The four studies approved by the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research are
the first step by the state to set concrete guidelines for use of the drug
by patients suffering illnesses such as AIDS, multiple sclerosis, cancer
and glaucoma.

Research teams at the University of California at San Francisco and San
Diego will look at smoked marijuana's effect on HIV-related pain. Another
study will focus on whether pot can ease spasticity caused by multiple
sclerosis. A fourth research team will examine concerns over the drug's
effect on the driving abilities of patients with AIDS or MS.

Igor Grant, a psychiatry professor at UC San Diego and the center's
director, said university research unfettered by any political agenda
should answer basic questions about medical marijuana while helping to
``reset the national thermostat on this issue.''

For years, the federal government has been largely unwilling to fund
exhaustive clinical studies of pot's potential therapeutic value,
preferring instead to support research into the drug's effects as an
illegal narcotic.

But federal officials have increasingly called for scientific proof in the
face of a groundswell movement that resulted in legalization of medical
marijuana in California and a half-dozen other states. The drug remains an
illegal narcotic under federal law, and the U.S. Supreme Court is set to
hear a challenge to medical marijuana next month.

Grant and others hope the California research effort, which won state
funding last year, can spur even more ambitious medical marijuana studies
backed by the federal government.

Though the four studies could begin as soon as May 1, a key hurdle remains.

The only source of research-grade marijuana in the United States is a
federal farm at the University of Mississippi. The California researchers
have yet to win approval from a fleet of agencies -- including the U.S.
Drug Enforcement Agency and the Food and Drug Administration -- that will
be needed to obtain the research cannabis.

Grant and the researchers don't expect snags. Federal regulators are
interested, he said, as long as marijuana researchers are ``serious people
looking at serious medical questions and not approaching it from some
advocacy position.''