MEDICAL PANEL URGES MARIJUANA RESEARCH

CARSON CITY -- A team of doctors and pharmacists has recommended that
the state conduct research to determine if marijuana is effective in
treating ailments such as cancer, AIDS or glaucoma.

The group said the research program would allow the state to avoid a
confrontation with the federal government, whose anti-marijuana laws
conflict with the recently passed initiative that allows marijuana
prescriptions.

The panelists said it would help resolve the debate on whether the
drug actually works.

The recommendations are contained in the final report released Tuesday
by the Nevada Medical Marijuana Initiative Work Group, formed last
year after Nevada voters in 1998 passed a ballot initiative to allow
medical use of marijuana. The initiative passed a second time in
November and now becomes part of the Nevada Constitution.

The work group issued its recommendations as guidelines to Gov. Kenny
Guinn and the state Legislature, which will also be considering bills
to reduce the penalty for possession of a small amount of marijuana
from a felony to either a gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor.

The group recommended formation of a committee of health care
professionals. Doctors or medical groups could apply to the committee
for permission to study the efficacy of marijuana.

If the committee sanctions the plan, the research proposal would have
to get federal approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the
Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Drug Abuse.

Louis Ling, general counsel to the state Pharmacy Board and a
co-author of the report, cited precedents for such state-federal
cooperation.

A plan similar to the Nevada patient research plan is already in use
at the University of California, San Francisco, which secured federal
approval, he said. And San Mateo County in California is close to
final approval from the federal government.

The state ad hoc committee would seek and distribute grants and
possibly state money to help applicants through the process with the
federal government and into the research stage.

"Marijuana would be purchased by the research study through federally
approved providers," the report says. "Marijuana would not be grown,
processed or manufactured in Nevada. The federally approved provider
would provide uniform, predictable and uncontaminated marijuana, thus
protecting patients from the vagaries of illegal or homegrown marijuana."

The physician conducting the research would write the prescription and
it would be filled by participating pharmacies that would purchase
marijuana from the federal government. This plan, said the work group,
"would allow physicians, not state bureaucrats, to decide which
patients would have access to marijuana for medical purposes."

This system, the group said, treats marijuana as "a potential
medicine.

"Modern medicine has been and continues to be enriched by medications
that originated from pre-existing biological materials," the report says.

But these materials, it said, must be "subjected to rigorous and
exacting medical and scientific research. Only through such rigor
could folk remedies and traditional cures be proven or disproven and
outright charlatanry be weeded out."

If the claims are proven, then the research enhances "the lives of
patients every day," the report said.

The team said it was aware that the system "may restrict the access of
some people to marijuana, since marijuana will only be available
through approved medical research programs."

Proponents of the constitutional amendment objected, the report notes,
and there was "considerable frank debate" on that issue. But the group
"determined that access to all experimental drugs is, by necessity,
limited."

"Such limited access is useful to produce credible results and to
protect patients from the potential harm that an untried substance
might produce.

"Several members of the work group hoped that marijuana might provide
medical tools presently unavailable, but they believed that only
credible scientific research could validate marijuana's utility and
safety," the report says.

The law proposed by the group would not authorize the use or
possession of the plant for purposes other than medical research. And
it would not require insurance companies to cover the medical
research. Nor would it require "accommodation of medical use in a
place of employment."

The group said, however, that marijuana available as part of an
approved research program may be provided free to patients. And
insurance companies could, if they wanted, reimburse for the use of
the drug.

The group mentioned problems with the distribution plan in California,
which is "entangled in litigation" as the federal government fights
the process.

The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing whether buyers clubs, at which
people with a doctor's prescription can purchase the drug, are legal.

The system in California will never answer the question of whether
marijuana is beneficial, the Nevada panel said. It said there won't be
any research on whether marijuana is safe when used as a medicine; on
potential dangers to patients who use the drug as a medicine; and on
its effectiveness in treating a specific disease or condition.

"Marijuana will remain stigmatized as an illicit drug as long as it
has no proven medical use," the report says. "Conversely, marijuana
cannot be kept in Schedule I as soon as it is scientifically proven to
have medical use, because it could then be moved into Schedule II."

Controlled substances with a high potential for abuse are placed in
Schedule I. Schedule II relaxes many of those restrictions.

Those on the work group were Drs. Dipak Desai, Joel Lubritz and Cheryl
A. Hug-English of the state Board of Medical Examiners; Drs. Scott
Harris, Rudy Manthei and Saul Schreiber of the Board of Osteopathic
Examiners and Joe Kellogg and Larry Pinson of the state Board of Pharmacy.

Others members were Dan Hart of Nevadans for Medical Rights, which
promoted the ballot initiative, and Dr. Trudy Larson, a professor at
the University of Nevada School of Medicine.

State Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, chairman of the Senate Human
Resources and Facilities Committee, said his group would consider the
recommendations. He has not seen the report yet and did not want to
comment.

"I'll wait and see the 'White Paper.' But this seems like the use is
restricted," he said.