U.S. MEDICAL-MARIJUANA MOVEMENT AWAITS KEY REPORT

SAN FRANCISCO - The battle over medical marijuana has been
waged on the streets, in the courts and at the ballot box.

This week the fight focuses on science with the release Wednesday of a
government-ordered report assessing claims that marijuana can
alleviate suffering associated with everything from AIDS and cancer to
glaucoma and chronic pain.

At stake, both sides in the debate say, could well be the future of
marijuana -- hailed by some as a miracle medicine, condemned by others
as a dangerous substance and the first step to hard drugs, addiction
and despair.

The report was commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences'
Institute of Medicine by Clinton administration anti-drug chief Barry
McCaffrey as a review of all the available research on marijuana. He
has said he will carefully weigh the evidence it presents.

Many observers expect that evidence to be positive, and while few
believe the report will offer specific policy recommendations,
pro-marijuana activists say even a suggestion that further research be
conducted would be powerful new ammunition in the struggle to make
marijuana medically available to people who say they need it.

``This gives a scientific basis to the argument,'' said Bill
Zimmerman, director of Americans for Medical Rights, a group that has
coordinated campaigns to pass medical marijuana initiatives in a
number of U.S. states.

``We're hopeful that the government will change its policy in response
to this report,'' Zimmerman said.

That hope would have seemed far-fetched just a few years ago. As
recently as last October, McCaffrey himself dismissed
medical-marijuana advocates as undercover operatives working to weaken
America's anti-drug resolve.

``Let's have none of this malarkey on marijuana-smoking by cunning
groups working to legalize drugs,'' he told a news conference.
``American medicine is the best in the world for pain
management.''

That position has been echoed by a range of conservative, religious
and family groups, who scoff at the notion that the rolled marijuana
joint should be allowed into America's medicine cabinets.

``Morphine is a pure derivative of heroin, and from the poppy. But no
doctor tells you to go out and smoke opium for pain relief,'' said
Terry Hensley of the Drug Free America Foundation of St. Petersburg,
Florida.

``This movement ... is using medical marijuana as a red herring or a
Trojan horse to legalize dope because they know they can get it
through on the compassion issue,'' Hensley said.

But compassion and the concerted efforts of well-organized AIDS
activist groups have carried the day in most of the recent tests of
the medical-marijuana issue.

California and Arizona in 1996 became the first states in the country
to pass voter initiatives legalizing certain medical uses of
marijuana, and six other states adopted similar measures in last
November's election.

Efforts to implement the state laws have been messy and ineffectual,
however, stymied in large part by federal anti-narcotics laws, which
ban marijuana as a Schedule I drug: dangerous, addictive and without
medical benefit.

Supporters of medical marijuana say this creates a dangerous situation
for the sick and infirm who believe they benefit from the drug,
forcing them to turn to potentially dangerous street dealers and
leaving them in fear of arrest.

``The tens of thousands of patients who are right now using marijuana
are criminals,'' said Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project, a
Washington-based group that has lobbied to bring the testimony of
medical-marijuana users before the review committee.

``This may be a war, but we have got to remove the sick and wounded
from the battlefield,'' Thomas said.

Anti-drug groups believe that is easily done, pointing to the fact
that the main active ingredient in marijuana, THC, is available in
synthetic form in the drug Marinol -- a pill that, like any other,
delivers a precise dose of a substance and can be monitored by a doctor.

But many marijuana-using patients say Marinol simply does not work as
well as a few puffs of a marijuana cigarette.

``The fact of smoking a medicine makes it highly unusual, but one has
to focus on the bottom line,'' said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the
Lindesmith Center, a New York-based drug policy think tank funded by
financier George Soros, who has backed a number of medical-marijuana
initiatives.

``There is overwhelming evidence, right in front of our eyes, that
this stuff works,'' Nadelmann said.

Whether that evidence will prove equally convincing to the Institute
of Medicine panel or McCaffrey is an open question. Officials in his
McCaffrey's office said the former general would have no comment on
the matter until after the report was released.