SIFTING THROUGH SCIENCE ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA

"We go in, I hope, with no particular positions or biases," says John A.
Benson, co-principal investigator for a year-long study into the efficacy
of marijuana as a medical tool in cases of glaucoma, AIDS, cancer
chemotherapy and other diseases. "We aren't there to try to rewrite laws or
reschedule marijuana or challenge the Arizona or California laws. Our job
is to see what the evidence is."

Let's hope he's right. Of course, it's almost impossible to remove politics
altogether when it comes to a substance the federal government has tried to
ban and about which it has discouraged research in the last decade or more.
But it is possible to separate valid scientific findings from personal
opinions.

If that is the intention of the Institute of Medicine -- a private,
non-profit organization that advises the government on health issues and
has been charged by federal "drug czar" Barry McCaffery with doing a study
of medical marijuana -- more power to it.

One can question the need for yet another government investigation into
marijuana's properties. Governments around the world have done at least a
dozen investigations, from the British government's Indian Hemp Drugs
Commission in 1894 to the Dutch government's 1995 report. All reached a
conclusion much the same as the 1972 National Commission on Marijuana and
Drug Abuse, which reported that "there is little proven danger of physical
or psychological harm from the experimental or intermittent use of natural
preparations of cannabis .... Existing social and legal policy is out of
proportion to the individual and social harm engendered by the drug."

On the medical-use front, the passage of ballot propositions in California
and Arizona last year testifies to a strong desire to allow doctors to
recommend the drug in situations where the doctor and patient believe some
benefit is possible.

If more patients are going to be using marijuana it would be helpful to
know with some precision just how helpful marijuana might be in relieving
certain symptoms. Almost all the information to date has been anecdotal
rather than from the kind of carefully designed double-blind studies most
researchers prefer. This occurred in part because the government, which
controls supplies of legal, research-grade cannabis, has refused until this
year to release any of it to medical researchers.

The Institute of Medicine project, at this point, does not contemplate
doing original clinical research. Rather, it will review previous studies,
analyze the anecdotal information that has emerged in recent years and
perhaps recommend future clinical trials. If the study opens the gates to
further legal scientific inquiries, that would be welcome.