MEDICAL POT STUDY RECEIVES SUPPORT

San Mateo County officials have gained tentative federal approval for a
locally funded medicinal marijuana trial to test whether it reduces
suffering for terminally ill patients.

County Supervisor Mike Nevin said Monday that he was excited by the U.S.
Health and Human Services Department's endorsement of the local clinical
trials, which are expected to begin this summer.

The San Mateo County study on whether marijuana can reduce pain and nausea
for AIDS patients could get under way in a few months assuming final
approvals also come, as expected, from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency
and U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

For more than two years, Nevin, a former San Francisco police officer, has
been a leading advocate for distribution of medicinal marijuana to people
suffering from AIDS, glaucoma, chronic pain and other serious ailments.

Nevin said county health officials received a letter late last week
notifying them that a panel of scientists at the U.S. Health and Human
Services Department have endorsed the basic plan -- with a few conditions.
Those conditions were mainly safety concerns about storage and distribution
of the marijuana, Nevin said.

For example, the panel wanted to be sure that no more than five marijuana
cigarettes would be passed out to patients at one time. Nevin said none of
the conditions poses a problem from local researchers' point of view.

``Those are issues they can easily deal with,'' he said.

Nevin said the trials will begin with 60 San Mateo County patients who
agree to participate. He said these trials could be a catalyst to make
marijuana a prescription drug -- which would make it more widely accepted
as a method of treatment.

``The politics of the issue got way ahead of the scientific medical field
and there have been no clinical trials to determine from a scientific
standpoint that in fact this substance works in the way we say it does,''
Nevin said. ``According to the testimony of the many people we've heard
from, marijuana hits the system faster and in some cases is the only relief
from the terrible pain caused by that kind of nausea.''

The unusual county proposal came in the wake of state Proposition 215 in
1996, in which voters approved the use of marijuana by seriously ill
patients. After rejecting a businessman's proposal to create a Redwood City
office to hand out the marijuana to patients and caregivers, the board of
supervisors set aside $500,000 for the study.

Federal approval will mean that coveted research-quality marijuana can be
released to San Mateo County scientists for their study. Nevin said the
county will get it from the University of Mississippi, where the federally
grown marijuana is cultivated.

Nevin said he hopes that positive study results may lead to making
marijuana available to AIDS, cancer and glaucoma patients as a legal
pharmaceutical in California and nationwide.