MEDICAL STUDY A SCORE FOR MARIJUANA

A Federal Study Concludes That Marijuana's Active Ingredients Have
Potential Value In Treating Americans With Cancer And AIDS

WASHINGTON - Marijuana is often less helpful for relieving symptoms of
debilitating illnesses than drugs already on the market, but its
active ingredients do have potential value as medicine to treat
thousands of Americans with cancer and AIDS who are suffering from
pain, uncontrolled nausea and vomiting or loss of appetite.

That's the conclusion of an advisory panel from the National Academy
of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, which the White House commissioned
two years ago to review the scientific benefits and risks of medical
marijuana.

In releasing the panel's lengthy report yesterday, John A. Benson Jr.,
dean and professor of medicine emeritus at Oregon Health Sciences
University School of Medicine in Portland, Ore., who helped lead the
review, said: "Some have dismissed medical marijuana as a hoax, ...
[while] others claim it is a uniquely soothing medicine that has been
withheld from patients through regulations based on false claims."

He said both sides have claimed scientific evidence to support their
views, but often the evidence simply isn't there.

Federal officials said "at least $600,000" of the National Institutes
of Health's $9 billion budget for grants this year was going toward
medical marijuana research.

They noted that getting NIH funding is a highly competitive
process.

Benson urged the federal government to support more research into the
therapeutic value of marijuana, noting, for example, that the panel
found no compelling evidence that marijuana should be used to treat
glaucoma, migraines or movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease
- - but mainly because appropriate studies have not yet been conducted,
not because data conclusively show that marijuana fails to work.

Although Benson and co-principal investigator Stanley J. Watson Jr., a
research scientist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, told
the news conference that their job was to look at the science and not
delve into policy issues, they said the panel didn't find that smoking
marijuana causes people to use "harder" illicit drugs, such as cocaine
and heroin.

Nor did it conclude that approving marijuana's medical use would
increase its use among the general population.

After spending 1 1/2 years looking into the matter with the assistance
of more than 35 leading scientists in the field, Benson said the
institute's findings "reflect the promise" of new scientific research
into medical marijuana.

But he repeatedly cautioned that marijuana's potential as a medicine
is limited by the harmful effects of smoking the drug.

He said that until researchers find other effective ways for
marijuana's rapid delivery, such as inhalers, the panel recommends
that only terminally ill patients or people with debilitating symptoms
that don't respond to approved medications use marijuana, and then
perhaps only for as long as six months.

He added that patients for whom marijuana is prescribed should be
enrolled in closely supervised clinical trials.

White House drug czar Gen. Barry McCaffrey commissioned the $896,000
study after voters in Arizona and California approved ballot
initiatives supporting medical marijuana.

He stated at the time that there was "not a shred of scientific
evidence that shows smoked marijuana is useful or needed."

Voters in Alaska, Nevada, Oregon and Washington has since followed
Arizona and California's lead.

Yesterday, McCaffrey downplayed the IOM study, saying it "shows there
is little future in smoked marijuana" as an approved medication.

He said the Clinton administration would continue to rely on the
judgments of top federal health officials on all issues related to
marijuana's medical value.

But spokesman Scott Ehlers of the Drug Policy Foundation - whose board
chairman is Ira Glasser of the American Civil Liberties Union and
whose executive committee includes former Surgeon General M. Joycelyn
Elders - said the IOM study "bolsters our argument that marijuana is
useful for a variety of ailments. It backs up what patients have
been saying all along - that marijuana is useful and it helps them."

Ehlers said the institute came out with a similar report on
marijuana's therapeutic value in 1982, "and that report was ignored.
The government is not looking into marijuana's use as a medicine, and
they're actively rejecting studies."