MARIJUANA:A'PATCH ADAMS' DRUG POLICY

One of the more emotionally gripping performances in a movie in 1998 was
Robin Williams in "Patch Adams."

Williams played a misguided, well-intentioned, cyclothymic medical student
who reveals the inadequacies of modern medicine, and medical doctors in
particular who fail to listen to and demonstrate empathy towards their
patients.Notwithstanding the positive message and reminding physicians of
their primary duties to patient care, the cheerless parts of the movie were
Adams' passion to advance socialized medicine and his revulsion at all
conventional medical thought and empirical medicinal therapies.

In like manner, marijuana advocates ["Snail's pace on Prop. 215, Editorial,
Feb. 22] are advancing a type of "Patch Adams" policy for medicinal
marijuana. Utilizing a poorly written, unclear state proposition and under
the guise of promoting compassion for the ill, the often stated and ultimate
goal of those who support medical marijuana is the eventual
decriminalization of the drug.

Similar to the charlatan claims of Laetrile as compassionate therapy for
cancer patients in the 1970s, the reality is marijuana has very limited
therapeutic applications in modern medicine and potentially is an unsafe
drug.

For example, marijuana advocates promote marijuana-smoking for the treatment
of hypertension, nausea, glaucoma, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.
They conveniently omit the fact that 3,600 or more tar-laden marijuana
cigarettes each year would have to be smoked to adequately treat their
diseases. Marijuana advocates also dismiss the long-term social and
respiratory diseases of marijuana smoke inhalation, negative sedative
properties, and the psychological and physical dependency that accompanies
marijuana use.

Recent data shows a dramatic increase in adolescent marijuana consumption
and the fact that teen-age marijuana users are 85 times more likely to use
other addictive drugs like cocaine (Columbia University Center on Addiction
and Substance Abuse). It is not good public policy to promote a drug with
limited medicinal application and a high potential for abuse and misuse.

Our drug policies require consistent and clear messages to our nation's
youth. That policy needs to spell out that a drug with a very limited
medicinal application and high abuse potential is the wrong prescription for
our society. Our children need to observe that we govern our lives by
objective, rational principle, rather than uninformed popular sentiment,
public opinion polls or a "Patch Adams" mentality. In other words, let
scientific thought and validation rather than emotions set the standard.