MARIJUANA VOTES: BANE OR BENEFIT?

Vital Signs / Pro & Con

Voters in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have approved
initiatives to legalize marijuana for medcal use. Does this application
encourage marijuana abuse?

YES

To answer that, you have to assume that there is medical marijuana. There
is no scientific proof of that yet. It has not been approved by the Food
and Drug Administration, and there have been no reputable studies that
propose to demonstrate marijuana's medicinal qualities..

It has not gone forward because Dr. Donald Abrams at the University of
California at San Francisco, who is conducting the only accepted study, has
to recruit subjects for a double blind study. But the only thing
participants can take while battling AIDS or cancer is marijuana.
Naturally, participants' willingness is limited.

In one study that compared marijuana to Marinol -- the active ingredient in
the marijuana plant -- patients preferred Marinol. It is premature to refer
to medicinal marijuana. The seduction of medical marijuana makes it seem
that marijuana is both harmless and beneficial.

That sends a bad message and encourages abuse. In the 1970's, Alaska
allowed home use of marijuana.

There was a marked increase of use by young people and a rise in child crime.

JIM McDONOUGH
Director of Strategy for the White House Drug Control Office

NO

Voters recognized a difference between the medical use of marijuana and
abuse. As with other medicine, the distinction between abuse and legitimate
use is clear.

In addition, legitimate medical use of marijuana has been supported by The
New England Journal of Medicine. Medical marijuana controls nausea for
cancer and AIDS patients, reduces spasms for paraplegia and neurological
diseases like multiple sclerosis and controls eye pressure for glaucoma
patients. Among test patients in the Federal Investigational New Drug
program, which dispenses medical marijuana, there have been no cases of
abuse, and some patients have been receiving marijuana for two decades. In
terms of the broader social ramifications, California is our best case study.

Recent figures from the Department of Health and Human Services show that
teen-agers in California are actually less likely to abuse marijuana: 6.9
percent of California teen-agers 12 to 17 used marijuana often, while 9.9
percent of teen-agers nationally used it frequently.

Sam Vagenas
Executive Director
National Council for Drug Control

Checked-by: Pat Dolan