STATE HEALTH AGENCY LACKS LEGAL SOURCE FOR MARIJUANA TESTS

Lawmakers' Latest Request Tossed Back To Legislature

Spokane - The Washington Health Department says it can't help clarify
the state's new medical marijuana law because it can't study the drug
without getting busted.

State Secretary of Health Mary Selecky has rejected a request by 28
lawmakers for the Health Department to try again to set up
medical-marijuana research the Legislature called for in 1979 and
again in 1996.

"The study was never performed because we were unable to secure a
legal source of marijuana," Selecky said in a recent letter to
legislators, including Spokane Sens. Lisa Brown and Bob McCaslin.

Federal law prohibits marijuana use even in states that have
authorized medical use, and federal officials have the only legal
supply for researchers.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse provides marijuana for research,
but Selecky said federal research guidelines "appear to be set up to
provide legal marijuana only for the development of new, non-smoked,
pharmaceutical products."

Selecky said developing a new marijuana-based drug would be enormously
expensive, inconsistent with the Health Department's mission and
unlikely to solve the problems with Initiative 692, which voters
passed in November 1998 to allow medical use of marijuana. Instead,
Selecky tossed the issue back to the Legislature.

"It ... appears that the inadequacies of the initiative language on
several important issues, such as identification of legitimate
patients and caregivers and the definition of a 60-day supply, may
require a legislative solution," Selecky said.

Initiative 692 says simply that, with a physician's approval, a person
may have a 60-day supply of marijuana to treat "chemotherapy-related
nausea and vomiting in cancer patients; AIDS wasting syndrome; severe
muscle spasms associated with multiple sclerosis and other spasticity
disorders; epilepsy; acute or chronic glaucoma; and some forms of
intractable pain."

The law implies patients may buy marijuana on the street and says they
may grow their own or have a "caregiver" grow it for them. But it
doesn't say how much a 60-day supply is.

The question of how much is enough has been the most vexing issue for
police, prosecutors and courts in several recent cases in northeastern
Washington. Authorities have taken the position that medical marijuana
users or caregivers must prove they aren't growing so much pot they
have some left over for sale or recreational use.

There is no scientific answer to the question of quantity, said Janet
Joy, a doctor of neuroscience and behavior who directed a National
Institute of Medicine review last year on medical-marijuana research.

Joy's study found that limited research, much of it on animals,
clearly shows potential for medical use of marijuana. However, the
study also found smoking marijuana to be a "crude" way of delivering
the drug, and one that delivers cancer-causing, fetus-damaging byproducts.

The report called for more research on medical marijuana but said the
goal should be to develop an inhaler or some other rapid, effective
way of delivering the tetrahydro-cannabinol (THC) drug contained in
marijuana plants.

Joy said such research is getting started in Canada and the United
Kingdom, where a 1998 study for the House of Lords came to many of the
same conclusions as the U.S. study Joy directed. But little has been
done so far in the United States.

Unless legislators or state agencies tackle the problem, the job of
determining appropriate medical uses and quantities rests with courts
in the half-dozen states that have passed medical-marijuana laws. The
Washington Legislature has twice failed to pass bills directing the
Health Department to conduct hearings and adopt regulations.

Even if state guidelines were in place, medical marijuana users would
have to rely on the discretion of U.S. attorneys not to prosecute them
under federal law. Federal prosecutors typically focus on large-scale
drug dealers.