POT HOAX

"Some dismiss medical marijuana as a hoax that exploits our natural
compassion for the sick," notes a new report from the Institute of
Medicine that details the therapeutic potential of cannabis. The
IOM's experts discreetly refrain from adding that it's an opinion
shared by the man who commissioned the report.

"There is not one shred of evidence that shows that smoked marijuana
is useful or needed," Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy, told the San Francisco Chronicle in
August 1996. "This is not medicine. This is a cruel hoax." At a
December 1996 press conference, McCaffrey was asked whether there was
"any evidence...that marijuana is useful in a medical situation." His
reply was unequivocal: "No, none at all."

So it was odd that McCaffrey asked the IOM, a branch of the National
Academy of Sciences, to review the evidence of marijuana's medical
utility - evidence he had repeatedly claimed did not exist.

Commissioned in January 1997 and released in March, the IOM report
(available at www.nap.edu) confirms that it was the drug czar who was
perpetrating the hoax.

"The accumulated data indicate a potential therapeutic value for
cannabinoid drugs [marijuana's active ingredients], particularly for
symptoms such as pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and
appetite stimulation," the report says. The authors find "there is no
conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally
linked to the subsequent abuse of other drugs." As for the idea that
"sanctioning the medical use of marijuana might increase its use in
the general population" - another of McCaffrey's favorite bugaboos -
"there are no convincing data to support this concern."

The report finds that "the adverse effects of marijuana use are within
the range of effects tolerated for other medications," with one
exception: Smoking it introduces toxins that may contribute to
respiratory illness over the long term. For this reason, the authors
conclude that the future of medical marijuana lies not in smoking the
whole plant but in absorbing its active components through inhalers or
other clean delivery systems.