TIME TO BRING MEDICAL MARIJUANA IN FROM THE COLD

A government-commissioned panel of experts reported last month that
there had been "an explosion of new scientific knowledge" on the
medical uses of marijuana. The chemicals in marijuana, they concluded,
can fight the nausea induced by chemotherapy, boost the appetites of
AIDS patients and ameliorate some symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

The report was no news to me. I had reached the same conclusions as a
cancer patient.

In 1992, I was found to have testicular cancer. My chemotherapy put me
in the hospital for five days at a time, once a month, for four months.

But midway through my treatment I could tell that Zofran, then a hot
new drug prescribed to combat nausea, was losing its effect. For the
remainder of my chemotherapy I turned to marijuana to keep my head
out of the toilet.

None of the doctors or nurses at the hospitals I went to for treatment
or consultation - New York University Medical Center and Memorial
Sloan-Kettering, respectively - discouraged me from using marijuana
should the need arise. They said they had patients who had benefited
from it when other drugs had failed.

But none of them could prescribe it, because using marijuana was a
crime - and remains so, despite a half-dozen state referendums since
1992 urging that it be legalized for medical use. Federal laws still
ban marijuana as stringently as heroin.

Not that I was ever at much risk of arrest. As a member of the media
elite I was not a likely target for a drug bust, and living in
Manhattan I could get what I needed under cover of urban anonymity.

But people in less privileged professions, or from different ZIP
codes, do get into trouble when buying or growing marijuana for
medical purposes. Unequal enforcement is a sign of bad law.

The experts' report raised serious questions about the toxicity of
marijuana smoke. But many medicines are toxic. The relevant question
is, toxic compared to what?

The chemicals in chemotherapy are dangerous. So is radiation. So are
the drugs in AIDS cocktails. An AIDS patient facing starvation might
well be willing to damage his lungs instead.

Further work should be done on alternative delivery systems, such as
inhalers and patches. But in the meantime there are sick people who
could use relief now.

Polemicists in the war on drugs fear that acknowledging marijuana's
medical efficacy would set a bad example. Then why don't we take
morphine out of hospital medicine cabinets?

There is also little risk of inducing bad habits in patients. Using
marijuana medically is the ultimate aversion therapy, forever linking
the plant to hospital smells and IV poles.

In almost every case when the medical use of marijuana has been put on
a ballot, it has been approved by voters. On this issue, voters have
shown that they are more mature than the political class.

For obvious reasons, there has been no leadership on this issue from
President Clinton, who began his career of evasion at the national
level by telling us he didn't inhale.

Conservative Republicans, my ideological soulmates, have also been
woefully stubborn. They hammered Hillary Clinton's health-care plan
because it would come between doctors and patients, yet they support
Gen. Barry McCaffrey and the Office of National Drug Control Policy
when they do the same thing. Support for medical marijuana is not an
exception to conservative principles but an extension of them.

My chemotherapy worked, and I haven't smoked during the entire Clinton
administration. But should I ever need to turn to marijuana again, I'd
like to be able to do so without the added burden of breaking the
law.