USE OF MEDICAL POT SAFE FOR HIV PATIENTS ON OTHER DRUGS

DURBAN, South Africa - The first U.S. study using medical marijuana for
people with HIV has found that smoking the plant does not disrupt the
effect of antiretroviral drugs that keep the virus in check.

The results were announced Thursday at the 13th International AIDS
Conference and are the first to be released from research conducted at San
Francisco General Hospital into the use of marijuana by people infected
with HIV.

It took four years for UC San Francisco professor Donald Abrams to jump
through hurdles erected by the federal government to get the research under
way, and in the process he was restricted to focusing on marijuana's safety
rather than its effectiveness.

The 67 people who participated in the study were kept in the hospital
during the 25-day study period.

"Any good clinician with his eyes and ears open has known for a long time
that cannabis is very useful in the treatment of AIDS reduction syndrome
and does not harm patients." said Dr. Lester Greenspoon, professor of
psychiatry at Harvard University and author of "Marijuana: The Forbidden
Medicine."

"When all the dust settles, and when marijuana is admitted to the U.S.
pharmacopoeia, it will be seen as one of the least toxic drugs in the whole
compendium. What Don (Abrams) has done is put the seal of approval on a
new drug with his double blind study."

The participants were divided into three groups - one set smoking pot,
another taking a pill containing pot's main ingredient, and a third taking
a placebo pill.

In all groups, tests showed that the level of virus in the blood dropped or
remained undetectable by current tests. But those taking marijuana either
by smoking or in a pill form saw their level drop slightly more than those
on the placebo.

Researchers also found that those using the pill or smoking pot gained an
average of 2.2 kilograms, compared to .6 kilograms in the placebo group.

- - Scripps Howard