CALIFORNIA CENTER WILL EXPLORE MARIJUANA'S THERAPEUTIC POTENTIAL

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The University of California, San Diego will soon begin
trials on medical marijuana at the nation's first research center designed
to explore the drug's therapeutic potential.

Doctors announced the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research on Tuesday as
part of the state's effort to set medical guidelines following the
voter-approved medical marijuana law.

The center, headquartered in San Diego, will begin distributing grants to
conduct clinical trials at universities and research centers throughout
California as early as January.

The studies will look at whether marijuana is a safe alternative for
treating certain kinds of medical conditions and the best ways to
administer it, such as through pills, patches or sprays.

"Our job is to show if these products are helpful and we can answer that
definitively," said Igor Grant, the center's director and professor of
psychiatry at UCSD.

Gov. Gray Davis has already approved $3 million to fund the program's first
year while legislation calls for a three-year program. The center was set
up in large response to Proposition 215, the 1996 state initiative allowing
seriously ill patients to grow and use marijuana for pain relief, if they
have a doctor's recommendation.

The U.S. Supreme Court's Tuesday order barring an Oakland club from
distributing the illegal drug for medicinal use will not affect the
research center, said Grant.

"Our program involves medical research. And research protocols will be
reviewed both by state and federal agencies, so we don't anticipate this
will interfere with what we're trying to do," he said.

While the court's 7-1 vote becomes the latest development in a conflict
between Proposition 215 and federal narcotics laws, Grant said it
highlights the need for research and to find the safest way to prescribe
marijuana.

Measures similar to the California initiative have passed in Alaska,
Arizona, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state.

State Sen. John Vasconcellos, who pushed for medical marijuana, penned the
program in 1996 but initially faced opposition from law enforcement groups.
Only after working with Attorney General Bill Lockyer did Vasconcellos
convince many that research was a good idea.

"It's been a very long road since the passage of 215 to even get as far as
we had with research," said Rand Martin, a spokesman for Vasconcellos. "We
have had to deal with a lot of political problems and the most exciting
thing is that we're putting the politics behind us."

Proponents have long argued that marijuana helps patients with chronic pain
and with AIDS, cancer and multiple sclerosis by relieving pain and nausea.
Opponents of marijuana say scientific research is necessary.

"We consider research a good thing," said Bob Weiner of the White House
National Drug Control Policy Office. "To have medicine determined by
science and not by popular will is exactly what we support."

Doctors at UCSD's center hope the research will eventually determine
whether marijuana has medical benefits because current federal law says the
drug has no medical purpose.

Trial patients will get marijuana from the National Institute on Drug Abuse
and researchers have pledged to follow all medical guidelines.

"There's been a long history of contention around cannabis and it has been
difficult to do research," said Grant. "This it the first study that's
multidisciplinary. The state of California has taken the lead here."