U.N. SEEKS MEDICAL MARIJUANA STUDY

UNITED NATIONS - A U.N. report recommends ending the politicized
debate over using marijuana for medical needs by conducting in-depth
and impartial scientific research into its possible benefits for some
patients.

The report, released today by the International Drug Control Board,
doesn't call for the legalization of marijuana or advocate loosening
controls over its use, said board member Herbert S. Okun of the
United States.

It calls instead for serious research in the public and private sector
to determine whether there are medicinal benefits for marijuana.

Only scientific evidence can end the current debate which is
"characterized by ignorance, by emotion, by propaganda on all sides
or at least certainly on the extremes of both sides," Okun told a news
conference Monday to launch the report.

The recommendation is highlighted in the annual report of the
Vienna-based board, which is a 13-member, quasi-judicial organization
overseeing U.N. drug treaties.

Among the other findings, the 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 said 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
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.