MEDICAL POT: KNEE-JERK OPPOSITION

AMERICA is goofy about drugs. The nation legalizes tobacco, which kills
more than 400,000 nicotine-hooked Americans every year.

And it legalizes alcohol, producing horror in car crashes, fires, family
violence and tipsy accidents.

Yet politicians act horrified at the notion of legalizing marijuana, a mild
exhilarant less harmful that tobacco and booze. They fear they'd be labeled
"soft on drugs" and clobbered in the next election.

In fact, politicos are so nervous about pot that they won't even let it be
used to ease the misery of terminal cancer or AIDS patients and other
sufferers. This stance is heartless.

Many Americans see the cruelty in withholding a painkiller from people in
agony. In 1996, voters in California passed an initiative allowing terminal
patients to use marijuana. But Congress and the Clinton administration
protested. National "Drug Czar" Barry McCaffery asked the National
Institute of Medicine for an objective, scientific study.

Now the study is finished - and it supports medicinal pot (cannabis). The
report says:

"The combination of cannabinoid drug effects (anxiety reduction, appetite
stimulation, nausea reduction and pain relief) suggests that cannabinoiods
would be moderately well-suited for certain conditions such as
chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting."

The report also says there is no evidence that marijuana is a "gateway"
leading users to hard narcotics. "Because underage smoking and alcohol use
typically precede marijuana use," it says, "marijuana is not the most
common, and is rarely the first, 'gateway' to illicit drug use. There is no
conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked
to the subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs."

America's attitude is shifting. Last year, initiatives for medical pot also
passed in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. Shouldn't this
send a message to timid politicians?

Clearly, marijuana doesn't belong in Schedule I of the Controlled
Substances Act with severe narcotics like heroin. However, last fall the
House of Representatives voted 310-93 to keep it on the severe list. And
the Clinton administration - headed by a president who says he puffed pot
but didn't inhale - opposes reclassification.

We think this political resistance is rooted more in posturing against
"sin" than in intelligent science.

We think pot should be legal for desperately ill people - and probably for
everyone.

It's silly for America to allow the free flow of tobacco and alcohol, but
criminalize a less-harmful drug.