DECRIMINALIZING RESEARCH

The federal government's decision to soften its stance on research into the
medical use of marijuana is overdue. For too long the demonization of the
drug, even to the extent of limiting scientific research, has delayed
important studies of whether marijuana may ease the pain and symptoms
associated with such ailments as cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma.

This is not opening the door to the widespread cultivation of marijuana and
the accompanying risk of lax controls allowing supplies to reach to street.
Rather it will allow a government approved growing site at the University
of Mississippi to increase its crop to provide sufficient marijuana for
researchers.

It has long been to the nation's shame that research has been limited into
the possible palliative effects of the drug for some patients. That is
particularly the case when some of those suffering from AIDS or glaucoma,
for example, are forced to the illegal market for their supply. In their
search for help in managing their ailments, these people have been
transformed into criminals. That's unacceptable.

The federal government is in part responding to voter sentiment supportive
of such research. Medical use of marijuana already has been approved in at
least six states, but because the drug is banned by federal law, some
doctors have been understandably nervous about prescribing it. The new
guidelines may ease those fears.

Those guidelines will allow privately funded researchers to purchase pot
from the government for use in studies sanctioned by the National
Institutes of Health. Both an NIH panel and the National Academy of
Sciences' Institute of Medicine have urged further scientific research into
possible medical benefits of marijuana for some patients.

Such research could lead to relief of the suffering of thousands of
Americans. Seen from that perspective it is, as we have said, difficult to
justify the time it has taken to reach this point. Allowing medical
research was never going to initiate "reefer madness.'' Instead, the
government's hard-nosed approach was seen as cruelly insensitive to the
needs of those patients who might be helped by using the drug.

Encouraging research cannot by any stretch of the imagination be viewed as
an endorsement of the drugs' recreational use. Rather, it is recognition
that marijuana may have medical benefits - and if so, they should be
uncovered and made available to patients in need.