TIMES INTERVIEW OF AL GORE

Vice President Al Gore discussed issues with LA Times Washington
Bureau editors and reporters on Monday, December 20, 1999.

Regulation of Tobacco and Use of Medical Marijuana

Q: If the Supreme Court strikes down the FDA's authority to regulate
nicotine in cigarettes which people say could happen, would a Gore
Administration push very hard and initiate legislation through
Congress that would give the FDA authority to regulate tobacco? And my
second question relates to medical marijuana. Can you be very clear
under which conditions you would condone and you would support medical
use of marijuana?

A: Sure. The answer to the first question is yes. I would aggressively
pursue the authority for FDA to regulate nicotine. It is a drug. It's
obviously a drug. It's more addictive, according to many scientists,
it's more addictive than heroine or cocaine. And it certainly kills a
lot more people. We lose more Americans to smoking every year than the
total number of Americans who died in all of World War II alone. I
mean if we were losing that many Americans to the actions of a foreign
military power every year, what do you think we would do in response?
The sky would be the limit. Yet we're taking this lying down because
it's been ingrained in our culture, because of the billions of dollars
in mental conditioning by the cigarette companies. It's the single
largest cause of preventable death in the nation -- the single largest
cause of preventable serious disease in the nation. And you bet I
would seek to regulate nicotine as a drug. Now on the second question,
if the research shows that there are pain relieving uses for medical
marijuana that nothing else can confer, then I think on the basis of
that research it should be allowed. But only under strictly supervised
circumstances, and only after the research arrives at that conclusion
on the basis of science.

Q: What about the compassionate use of medical marijuana now, and some
people say they can't wait around for years...

A: The active ingredient is available now, and the claims that other
substances in the smoke are therapeutic have not been validated by
scientists. The potential for the back door legalization of marijuana
is a serious concern and I'm opposed to the legalization of
marijuana...Yes, as I think I said the other night, I think that all
of those initiatives have been overly broad and would result in the de
facto legalization of marijuana, and I'm opposed to that. You know,
for a number of years in Tennessee medical marijuana was legal.

Q: Wasn't your sister...

A: Yes. She was given a prescription for her chemotherapy, but it
didn't work. And you know, the scientists are... If the science showed
that it did work and worked better than anything else, then you know,
fine. And I also said in the debate the other night that I think we
need new attention on this issue that doctors have been raising on
pain management, because there are a lot of people who suffer a great
deal of pain unnecessarily because of prevailing philosophies in
medical practice that you know, the better research tends to
discredit. But in the case of medical marijuana, the research tends
now clearly to show that there is never a circumstance where smoke
delivered medicine is the recommended prescription. Now if that
changes, and I agree from what they tell me that the research hassome
ambiguities in it, and that they're going back to take another look at
it. If the research shows that it is the recommended medical
treatment, then that's a different matter, but it's not there yet.

(snip)