LAWYERS, DOCTORS BACK CANNABIS

Cannabis could become a legal herbal medicine for people suffering from
cancer and AIDS under a plan by doctors' and lawyers' groups.

In a joint call yesterday, the AMA's NSW president, Dr Kerryn Phelps, and
the president of the Law Society, Ms Margaret Hole, urged the NSW Government
to change its drug laws to allow cannabis to be prescribed, for certain
conditions and under supervision.

The State Government has not ruled out the proposal.

The NSW Attorney-General, Mr Shaw, said it was not something the Government
had considered but "I would be interested to see the AMA's submission on
that matter".

"I am personally interested in it. If there is a bona fide medical case for
the use of any drugs for the use of palliative care or the like then I
personally think it ought to be seriously considered."

Marijuana was sometimes the only thing that helped people deal with the pain
and intractable nausea of diseases such as leukaemia, lymphoma, and certain
AIDS-related conditions and the treatment, Dr Phelps said.

Yet such people faced arrest and prosecution for using an illegal drug.

"The bottom line is we are talking about people who on compassionate grounds
need a medical treatment ..." she said.

"I would challenge any politician to look any person in the eye who has
intolerable symptoms ... and say we know there is something that might work
for you but we are not going to make it legal."

The illegality of cannabis for people for whom it was the only workable
palliative treatment was "a human rights issue", Ms Hole said. "If I have a
disease, I have a human right to be treated with the best medicine possible."

There are no legal supplies of cannabis available in Australia. The chairman
of the Australian Committee for the Medical Use of Cannabis, Mr Timothy
Moore, said the first step was to allow those who needed the drug for
medical purposes to use it; the second was to set up a legal supply of it,
grown in controlled conditions similar to those used for its supply in
California (where supervised medical use is legal) and for research in Britain.

Several overseas studies have shown that compounds in cannabis can alleviate
nausea and stimulate appetite.

"This yields enormous quality of life benefits for some individuals who
suffer from diseases or disease treatments that produce impaired appetite or
nausea," said Dr Macdonald Christie, head of pharmacology at the University
of Sydney.

It was also useful in reducing chronic pain. He said it had been shown that
smoking cannabis produced more effective results than eating it.

Mr Paul Dekonig, who was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 1988,
said when he recently had 16 weeks of chemotherapy, he smoked cannabis
regularly, and "as a result I didn't vomit".

Most people on such long series of treatments lost a great deal of their
body weight because they couldn't eat and had no appetite. Because his
appetite was stimulated, "I only lost 10 per cent of my total bodyweight"
and he recovered from the debilitation of chemotherapy faster as a result.

"I don't like the idea of being a criminal for using cannabis," he said.