GROUNDSWELL FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Two years ago, voters in California and Arizona registered their
dissatisfaction with a drug war that refuses to make important
distinctions. They approved measures legalizing marijuana for therapeutic
purposes, a step that was denounced by drug czar Barry McCaffrey and other
hard-liners. But the opponents of medical marijuana have yet to make a
convincing case why cannabis should not be available to people who need it
to relieve serious ailments.

Tuesday, the ripple of public support that appeared in 1996 swelled into a
good-size wave. Voters in Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington
approved measures to loosen the unreasonably strict rules on the use of
cannabis to alleviate illness. By a large margin, Oregonians also rejected
a proposal to restore criminal penalties for marijuana possession, which
the state had lifted.

The medical potential of pot is undeniable by now. Many cancer specialists
recommend it to patients for the severe nausea that often accompanies
chemotherapy. As a stimulus to appetite, it has proven invaluable to AIDS
victims, who frequently suffer severe weight loss because they lose
interest in food. It also appears to arrest the advance of glaucoma, a
leading cause of blindness, in some patients.

A federal administrative judge recommended in 1988 that cannabis be
reclassified so that it could be prescribed by physicians, noting that it
"has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of
very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision." The
New England Journal of Medicine has endorsed such a change.

Critics say there is a dearth of serious studies documenting marijuana's
value. But that's because the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the only
legal supplier of cannabis, has been reluctant to facilitate such research.
Little clinical work can be done until the federal government makes it a
priority.

But funding and cooperating in such studies would require elected officials
and bureaucrats to concede that cannabis may not be an unmitigated evil.

So far, such open-mindedness is far more common among ordinary people than
among those who make policy.