US URGED BY PANEL TO GIVE MEDICAL TRIAL TO MARIJUANA

THE active ingredients in marijuana can help fight pain and nausea and
deserve to be tested in scientific trials, says a US federal advisory
panel.

The Institute of Medicine also said there was no conclusive evidence
that marijuana use leads to harder drugs.

The report is certain to reignite the debate over whether marijuana is
a helpful or harmful drug. In the past few years, voters in Alaska,
Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have
approved measures in support of the medicinal marijuana, even though
critics say such measures send the wrong message to kids.

Congress has taken a hard line on the issue. The US House last autumn
adopted by 310-93 vote a resolution that said marijuana was a
dangerous and addictive drug and should not be legalised for medical
use.

The White House drug policy office asked the institute, which is an
affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, to examine the issue.

The institute said that because the chemicals in marijuana ease
anxiety, stimulate the appetite, ease pain and reduce nausea and
vomiting, they can be helpful for people undergoing chemotherapy and
people with Aids. But the panel warned that smoking marijuana can
cause respiratory disease and called for the development of
standardised forms of the drugs, called cannabinoids, that can be
taken, for example, by inhaler.

"Marijuana has potential as medicine, but it is undermined by the fact
that patients must inhale harmful smoke," said Stanley Watson of the
Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, one of
the study's principal investigators. Even so, the panel said, there
may be cases where patients could in the meantime get relief from
smoked marijuana, especially since it might take years to develop an
inhaler.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it would
carefully study the recommendations.

"We note in the report's conclusion that the future of cannabinoid
drugs lies not in smoked marijuana, but in chemically defined drugs"
delivered by other means, the office said in a statement.

One patient called the findings long overdue.

"It's taken a long time, but I feel like now, people will stand up and
listen," said Irvin Rosenfeld, a Florida stockbroker who has smoked
marijuana supplied by the federal government for 27 years because of a
rare medical condition. "When you have a devastating disease, all you
care about is getting the right medicine ... and not having to worry
about being made a criminal."

Rosenfeld suffers from tumours that press into the muscles at the end
of long bones. The marijuana relaxes those muscles, allowing him to
move with less pain. Rosenfeld is one of just eight people in the US
receiving marijuana from the government because of unusual diseases.

Daniel Zingale of Aids Action said he was: "Pleased the study
validates the benefits of medicinal marijuana."

Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project said the report shot down

claims marijuana had no medical benefits.