UN URGES STUDY OF MEDICAL MARIJUANA

UNITED NATIONS (AP) In-depth and impartial scientific studies should be
conducted into marijuana's possible medical benefits, a U.N. report
recommended Tuesday.

Only scientific evidence from the public and private sector can end the
emotion-charged political debate over using cannabis for patients, said
Herbert S. Okun, a member of the International Drug Control Board.

He stressed, however, that the board wasn't recommending easing controls on
marijuana. The Vienna-based board is a 13-member, quasi-judicial
organization overseeing implementation of U.N. drug treaties.

Among the other findings, the board's annual report said Europeans are the
world's top users of stress-reducing drugs, while Americans hold the record
for consuming the most performance-enhancing substances.

While the reasons for such a disparity weren't known, Okun told a news
conference Monday that it may lie in cultural, lifestyle and other forces.

The aging European population has access to more extensive health care
systems, which may be more willing to prescribe drugs to reduce aches and
pains, he noted.

The high use of performance-enhancing drugs in the Americas may be at least
partly explained by the prevalent sense of competition there, the report
indicated.

In particular, Okun said the board was concerned about over-prescription in
the United States of methylphenidate, sold as the drug Ritalin, to treat
children with attention deficit disorder.

American patients are consuming 330 million daily doses of the substance
compared to 65 million for patients in the rest of the world, the report
found.

The agency also warned that more and more North Americans are smoking
heroin and said Europe has emerged as a producer of cannabis and synthetic
drugs. Cannabis continues to be the most commonly abused illegal drug in
the United States, Canada and Mexico.

The report expressed concern about the prevalence of do-it-yourself guides
on the Internet, which teach users how to prepare certain illegal substances.

And it repeated its concern that painkillers such as morphine are
increasingly hard to come by in the developing world, though they are
widely available in the industrialized world about 100 times more available
in the world's top 20 industrialized countries than in the bottom 20.

The board, whose mission is to ensure the legal availability of drugs for
medical purposes, is launching a campaign called "Freedom From Pain" to
make such drugs more available in the developing world.