THE DOPE ON MARIJUANA

`We go in, I hope, with no particular positions or biases," says John A. Benson, coprincipal investigator for a yearlong 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, nonprofit organization that advises the government on health issues and has been charged by federal "drug czar" Barry McCaffery with doing a yearlong study of medical marijuana, more power to them. The group is hearing public and scientific testimony this week at UC Irvine.

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 Marihuana 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 medicaluse front, the passage of Prop. 215 in California last year, along with the passage of Prop. 200 in Arizona, 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 doubleblind studies most researchers prefer. This occurred in part because the government, which controls supplies of legal, researchgrade 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.