STUDY: MARIJUANA HELPS FIGHT PAIN

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The active ingredients in marijuana can help fight pain
and nausea and
thus deserve to be tested in scientific trials, an advisory panel to
the federal government said today in a report sure to reignite the
debate over whether marijuana is a helpful or harmful drug. The
Institute of Medicine also said there was no conclusive evidence that
marijuana use leads to harder drugs.

In the past few years, voters in Alaska, Arizona, California,
Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have approved measures in
support of medical marijuana, even though critics say such measures
send the wrong message to kids. Congress has taken a hard line on the
issue, with the House last fall adopting by 310-93 vote a resolution
that said marijuana was a dangerous and addictive drug and should not
be legalized for medical use. Asked to examine the issue by the White
House drug policy office, 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. The institute, an
affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the federal
government with independent scientific advice and receives no federal
money.

But the panel warned that smoking marijuana can cause respiratory
disease and called for the development of standardized 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 headed by retired Gen. Barry
McCaffrey 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 Boca Raton, Fla., 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," said Rosenfeld. He suffers from tumors that press into the
muscles at the end of long bones. The marijuana relaxes those muscles,
keeping them from being torn by the tumors and allowing him to move
with less pain. Rosenfeld is one of just eight people in the country
receiving marijuana from the government because of unusual diseases.

The panel urged clinical trials to determine the usefulness of
marijuana in treating muscle spasms.

While it also has been promoted as a treatment for glaucoma, the panel
said smoked marijuana only temporarily reduces some of the eye
pressure associated with that disease.

Daniel Zingale of AIDS Action said he is "pleased that the study
validates the benefits of medicinal marijuana."

Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project said the report "shoots
down" claims that marijuana has no medical benefits. Opponents of
allowing medical use of marijuana long have claimed that it is a
"gateway" drug, giving people a start on the road to more dangerous
drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

But the report concludes there is "no conclusive evidence that the
drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to subsequent abuse of
other illicit drugs."

In fact, the report concludes, most drug users did not begin with
marijuana but rather started by using tobacco and alcohol while they
were underage. The New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized
in favor of medical marijuana and the American Medical Association has
urged the federal National Institutes of Health to support more
research on the subject. An expert panel formed by NIH found in 1997
that existing research showed some patients could be helped by the
drug, principally to relieve nausea after cancer chemotherapy or to
increase AIDS patients' appetites. The drug also has helped some
patients control glaucoma, that panel found.