NO PAEAN TO POT

Marijuana has its advocates, people who want it to be legalized generally.
Some clearly think that permitting the drug's medical use would advance
this cause. They may be rejoicing, then, over a scientific panel's recent
report saying the active ingredients in marijuana can whet the appetite,
reduce pain and counteract nausea. The report, however, is scarcely a paean
to pot.

It is true the report does not conclude that patients treated with
marijuana will graduate from limited puffs in a hospital to buying
wholesale quantities in the streets or maybe mainlining heroin a
generations-old scare tactic that has done much to blind pot advocates to
the real dangers of using marijuani. Nor does the report do what the
nation's drug czar, Barry McCaffrey, presumably hoped it would do when he
commissioned it. It does not say marijuana is without any medical benefits
at all.

What the report does stress, though, is that marijuana smoke is toxic,
worse than the smoke from cigarettes. Meanwhile, it says, the benefits of
smoking marijuana are modest and can be obtained by most patients from
other treatments. It cites a relatively few circumstances under which
patients should be treated with marijuana, and says the treatments should
only be for short periods under close supervision. The most likely
candidates for treatment are those who need fear no long-term consequences,
such as the terminally ill.

Even then, the treatments would not be justified unless they were studied
to gain more information about the drug. Any medical use of marijuana
beyond these recommendations, the report says, should await the development
of such risk-free delivery mechanisms as inhalers.

If Congress modified federal law in accord with the report's advice, the
legal doors would scarcely be flung wide open for the medical use of
marijuana. In the seven states that have already approved prescribed use
for health reasons, doctors would still have to worry about federal
prosecution if they did not heed the tight guidelines. Nor does the report
lend credence to those who insist the only reason marijuana is not
generally legalized is an irrational misapprehension of its effects. As
this report makes clear, marijuana is dangerous.