Support Marijuana Research

NOW THAT Proposition 215 has made marijuana legal for
medicinal use in California, it makes sense for researchers
to study pot under scientific conditions to determine its
properties as a curative as well as its dangers as a drug.

A bipartisan bill that would provide $1 million to establish
a California Medical Marijuana Research Center (SB 535)
passed the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday and is
expected to move to the Senate floor next week where it will
need a difficult two thirds vote to pass.

The measure by Senator John Vasconcellos, DSanta Clara,
would set up and finance research ``to enhance understanding
of the efficacy of marijuana as a pharmacological agent''
and would focus clinical trials of the drug on patients
afflicted with a variety of ills.

Under the bill, research would be conducted by the
University of California on patients suffering from AIDS,
glaucoma, cancer, multiple sclerosis, seizure disorders and
from nausea and agonies related to chemotherapy.

Since marijuana is currently used by millions of
Californians legally as a folk medicine and illegally as a
recreational drug, it is a public health issue that should
have been examined long ago. Efforts at serious,
wellfinanced scientific evaluation of pot have been
hampered by state and federal officials including
Governor Wilson and President Clinton who oppose
legalizing pot under any circumstances. Yet there are
positive signs that scientific inquiry may be making some
headway. The 35,000member California Medical Association,
which opposed Proposition 215, supports marijuana research.

The scope of Vasconcellos's bill has been substantially
scaled back from its original goal of setting up a $6
million program to research pot's therapeutic value and
design a distribution system for patients.

But even in its reduced state, the bill to finance a
milliondollar research program would be a start in the
right direction to determine the true medicinal worth of
marijuana, as well as its health hazards.