MARIJUANA POLICY FOR ILL DRAWS CRITICS

In an indication of growing public support for legalizing marijuana for
medical use, scores of celebrities, health officials, and members of
Congress joined yesterday in protesting a new US medical marijuana research
policy for lacking compassion and being "too cumbersome."

The policy spells out the conditions under which studies involving marijuana
can be conducted: conditions that critics say are so stringent as to make
the research virtually impossible. Critics also argue that current policy
fails to allow a sufficient number of medically approved patients to receive
marijuana through "compassionate use" programs.

Signing on to letters of protest yesterday were actors Susan Sarandon and
Woody Harrelson; comedians Richard Pryor and Bill Maher; Harvard scientist
Stephen Jay Gould; rock band Hootie & The Blowfish; former US surgeon
general Joycelyn Elders; and former Reagan administration official Lyn
Nofziger.

Massachusetts Democratic Representatives Barney Frank, James P. McGovern,
and John W. Olver also joined the effort, along with US representatives from
around the country, including three Republicans.

The letters, addressed to Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna
Shalala, come just weeks after Maine became the sixth state to legalize
medical marijuana through a ballot question. The other states are
California, Arizona, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska, which allow certain
patients to both grow and smoke their own, or allow them to possess it
legally. Marijuana is used medically to control nausea and other effects of
cancer treatment and ease symptoms of AIDS and other conditions.

While an attempt in Massachusetts to bring the issue to the voters in next
year's elections fell short of getting the necessary signatures by this
month's deadline, organizers of the effort vow to try again.

"We know the people of Massachusetts really support doctors' ability to
prescribe marijuana," said Bill Downing, president and chairman of MASS
CANN/NORML, the state chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of
Marijuana Laws that helped get more than 20,000 signatures in support of a
ballot question to legalize medical marijuana and change other aspects of
the law but fell short of the nearly 60,000 signatures required.

Since the early 1990s, Massachusetts has had a research program on the books
that would allow medically approved patients to get marijuana under
controlled conditions, but the state Department of Public Health has never
been able to get legal access to the drug from the US government.

Even the new US research guidelines that go into effect tomorrow will not
give patients access to the Massachusetts program, said Paul Jacobsen,
deputy public health commissioner. "It basically doesn't provide us with an
approvable source" for the drug, said Jacobsen. "We have our program. It's
up, it can run, but without a source, it's a moot point."

A US Department of Health and Human Services spokesman could not be reached
for comment yesterday.

In the meantime, patients like Jim Harden, 49, of Virginia, are in pain and
angry at the government policy. Harden was one of the patients cited in a
recent federally commissioned Institute of Medicine report as someone who
should have legal access to medical marijuana, as only eight other patients
nationwide do right now under a US program that stopped admitting people
years ago. The report urged the federal government to expand compassionate
use programs.

At a news conference in Washington yesterday, Harden got up from his
wheelchair, holding a copy of that institute's report, to tell his story.

In a telephone interview later, Harden described his health problems over
the last three years, from end-stage liver disease as a result of hepatitis
contracted from a blood transfusion to chronic pain as a result of being
crushed by a drill while working as a geologist to the nausea caused by the
medications he uses.

"I used to have 17-inch biceps and a 46-inch chest. Now I have a 34-inch
chest and my biceps are around 10 inches," he said. "Marijuana allows me to
eat," said Harden, who has only been able to get the drug illegally. "The
marijuana was really instrumental in saving my life, in allowing me to live
so long."