MEDICAL MARIJUANA STAND CLARIFIED

Writing in Island Voices, May 9, Pamela Lichty stated that numerous medical
organizations, including the California Medical Association (CMA), have
"supported the use of medical marijuana." The article was critical of the
Hawaii Medical Association's position on the recent legislation that
authorizes, under state law, the use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Lichty supported her statement concerning CMA's policy by quoting a recent
amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief filed by CMA in the federal civil
litigation brought by the Department of Justice against several California
cannabis buyers' clubs.

I would like to clarify CMA's position on the subject: Contrary to Lichty's
contention, CMA neither supports nor opposes the medical use of marijuana.
Rather, CMA has consistently maintained its position that marijuana should
be widely available for therapeutic use only if there have been properly
controlled clinical studies proving that it is efficacious.

CMA has called upon the federal government to facilitate the availability
of high-quality inhaled marijuana and to take other necessary steps to
promote such research. CMA supports the removal of marijuana from Schedule
I in order to allow greater access for research as well as efforts to
obtain federal approval for limited prescriptive access and for an
appropriately regulated distribution system.

However, we continue to believe the requirements of the state and federal
drug laws serve a critically important function in protecting patients from
potentially inefficacious and even dangerous drugs. Hence, CMA does not
support the use of the legislative or initiative process to make any
unproven and insufficiently tested medicine available to the public. For
those reasons, CMA opposed Proposition 215 when it was before the
electorate in California.

The brief from which Lichty quoted was filed, not specifically to support
the medical use of marijuana, but to support the concept of "medical
necessity" recently articulated in that litigation by the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals. In the brief, CMA argued that when a patient has tried
all available standard therapies without success, that patient with the
support and approval of his or her physician should be free to explore
other, less conventional treatments.

Such desperate patients, their physicians and others who attempt to aid
them should be neither punished nor unnecessarily impeded by governmental
enforcement agencies. CMA supported the right of a patient and physician to
use any potentially therapeutic modality that may assuage the suffering of
a patient who can find relief in no other way.

Jack C. Lewin, M.D., Executive Vice President & CEO, California Medical
Association, Former Director of Hawaii Department of Health