MARIJUANA INGREDIENTS COULD HOLD HEALTH FIRM'S POT OF GOLD

Cannabis Medicines Wouldn't Be Smoked

Iowa City, Iowa -- By cultivating marijuana and testing the most promising
of its more than 100 ingredients, a British pharmaceutical company hopes to
develop drugs for a variety of ailments, a company official said at the
first national conference for health professionals on the medical uses for
marijuana.

The privately owned company, GW Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Salisbury, England,
is ``trying to turn an illegal plant into a pharmaceutically regulated
product'' by developing cannabis-based medicines that are not smoked, said
Dr. David C. Hadorn, the company's North American medical director. GW is
studying what it believes will be the most promising ingredients of
marijuana in a structured research program.

Earlier this month, the British government approved the company's plans to
advance to the next stage of testing, for effectiveness, among people with
multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and other conditions that produce
severe pain and muscle spasms. Six healthy volunteers had earlier taken
four different preparations several times over a period of several weeks in
the earliest phase of testing, for safety.

Full-scale testing eventually will involve about 2,000 patients in England,
Canada and the United States, and the hope is to develop a licensed product
by 2003, Hadorn said.

The University of Iowa's colleges of nursing and medicine sponsored the
two-day conference to help health care professionals and providers learn
how to obtain and properly use medical marijuana.

Melanie C. Dreher, the nursing school's dean, said the conference was
needed because thousands of Americans use marijuana medically even though
it is illegal in most states. Voters in at least seven states (Alaska,
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have approved
initiatives intended to make marijuana legal for medical purposes. But many
doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has
threatened to prosecute them.

In an interview, Dreher -- who has researched marijuana use for many years
- -- spoke of a nurse's experience with the father of a man with cancer. The
father told the nurse that marijuana had eased his son's nausea and pain at
home. Taking the hint, the nurse rigged the son's intravenous tubing to a
wheelchair to allow them to go off while the son smoked a marijuana
cigarette. The therapy allowed the son a more comfortable death.

The American Medical Association supported the Iowa conference by awarding
doctor participants credits toward their continuing education.

No government officials were among the 250 patients, doctors, nurses and
lawyers who attended the conference and at telecasts in seven medical
centers in the United States and Canada. Dr. David Satcher, the surgeon
general of the Public Health Service, declined an invitation, Mathre said.

In a government-commissioned study a year ago, the Institute of Medicine of
the National Academy of Sciences said some of the ingredients in marijuana
are potentially effective in treating pain, nausea and severe weight loss
from AIDS.