IOWAN PRAISES UI CONFERENCE ON MEDICINAL POT

IOWA CITY -- George McMahon takes great pride that the University of Iowa
had the courage to host the first national conference on the medical uses of
marijuana.

A resident of Bode in north-central Iowa, the 49-year-old McMahon is one of
eight people in the United States who not only has federal government
permission to smoke marijuana for medical reasons, but gets the drug from
the government.

"You can't imagine how proud I am," he said Friday at the Iowa Memorial
Union, where the conference is being held. "This is a lot of work by a lot
of people. The school is taking a major stand."

But politics and passions surrounding marijuana often make it difficult to
discuss the drug objectively, said Al Byrne, co-founder of Patients Out of
Time, which favors decriminalizing marijuana for medical uses.

The two-day conference, which drew about 100 participants to the UI and
which continues today, is more about medical science than political science,
Byrne said in welcoming remarks Friday.

The proceedings were beamed live to sites in Oregon, Canada, Arkansas and
Colorado.

The conference, sponsored by Patients Out of Time and the UI's colleges of
nursing and medicine, comes in the wake of a controversial 1999 study for
the federal government by the Institute of Medicine.

The study shows that marijuana's active components are potentially effective
in medical situations.

The study's authors, including Janet Joy, who was the first speaker at the
conference, encourage scientists to conduct further research into how the
drug can be used and to find alternatives to smoking it that send the drug
into a patient's system just as quickly.

The bottom line is that marijuana shows the most promise for use as an
anti-nausea drug, as a drug to alleviate pain and for appetite stimulation,
Joy told the researchers, medical experts and other proponents of using the
drug who attended the conference.

McMahon said he smokes 300 cigarettes a month, about half a pound, to
relieve pain related to systemic tuberculosis and onico osteo perosis, a
rare disorder causing severe degeneration of his bones and joints.

But he says he is lucky.

He believes there are many people out there with diseases ranging from
glaucoma to multiple sclerosis who suffer needlessly because marijuana
remains illegal, even for medical purposes. Those people, he said, could
benefit from being able to get a doctor to prescribe cannabis to help
alleviate a host of symptoms.

The Institute of Medicine study noted that most medicinal users of marijuana
experience euphoria, which they say can often serve a therapeutic purpose.
The study called for more research into that area.

Melanie Dreher, dean of the UI College of Nursing, told the conference she
denounced what she called shortsightedness in the medical community. Nurses,
doctors and others "refuse to look at real evidence ... (and) prefer to
ignore the experience of people all over the world."

At the same time voters in California, Maine, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado,
Nevada, Oregon and Washington all have passed ballot measures legalizing
marijuana for medical purposes.

People such as McMahon and Scott Imler, president of the Los Angeles
Cannabis Resource Center, are hopeful the UI conference contributes to
public discussion and allows people to talk about using marijuana for
medical purposes more openly.

But the debate needs to include the scientific down side of the drug, said
Robert Block, a UI associate professor of anesthesia who studies the effects
of marijuana on brain functions. He has found evidence that marijuana
impairs some mental abilities.

Doctors and patient advocates need to be aware of research like his, said
Block, who will make a presentation at the conference today The fact that
there are negative effects, however, "doesn't mean that marijuana cannot be
used therapeutically," he said.