A MEDICAL DOCTOR'S MARIJUANA TRIP

Although fewer than 3,000 Canadians are licensed to use medical
marijuana, it's estimated that between 400,000 and one million people
in the country use cannabis as medication. The following is the
second in a series of articles about the use of marijuana to treat
medical conditions.

Trent Hills - In 1967 Dr. Lester Grinspoon was a young assistant
professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the senior
author of an in-depth study of schizophrenia.

He was also one of a growing number of medical professionals who were
becoming concerned about the number of young people who were
experimenting with "a terribly dangerous drug" called marijuana.

While waiting for some of his colleagues to submit their
contributions to the book on schizophrenia, Grinspoon decided to
begin an objective academic study of marijuana.

He believed that if kids would not heed government warnings about the
plant's toxicity, some would at least give credence to a
well-researched scientific paper describing the dangers of smoking pot.

But while doing his research, Grinspoon did not, as he expected,
discover overwhelming evidence of marijuana's dangers to physical and
mental health. Instead, he discovered that much of what he thought he
knew about the drug was based on myth and misinformation.

The information he gathered from his research made him skeptical
about society's conventional perspective on marijuana and launched
him on a personal and professional journey that would lead him to
become one of the world's most outspoken and articulate advocates for
medical cannabis and the legalization of marijuana.

During a phone interview with The Community Press from his
Massachusetts home, the associate professor emeritus of psychiatry
described how he reacted to the results of his study.

"I had come to this with skepticism and a real concern for young
people. To my astonishment, and it didn't take long, I discovered I
had been brainwashed."

Grinspoon said he began to realize that marijuana, rather than being
an extremely toxic drug, was relatively benign.

"There's no such thing as a harmless drug. But marijuana would be
among the 10 least harmful drugs in the pharmacopoeia," he said.

In fact, until 1937, marijuana was included in the medical
pharmacopoeia, he said.

Between 1840 and 1900, more than 100 papers on the therapeutic use of
marijuana were published in European and American medical journals,
Grinspoon pointed out in a 1995 paper he co-authored for the Journal
of the American Medical Association titled "Marijuana as Medicine: A
Plea for Reconsideration."

The United States Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 made the drug so
difficult to obtain for medical purposes it was taken out of the
pharmacopoeia. And it was then that doctors simply stopped thinking
about cannabis as a viable medical therapy, despite its 5,000-year
history as a therapeutic plant, Grinspoon said.

The prohibition of marijuana in the 20th century was also the
beginning of what Grinspoon has described as "a popular delusion that
has been responsible for the arrest of more than 12 million U.S. citizens."

Although he acknowledges there is legitimate concern about possible
lung damage as a result of smoking marijuana, Grinspoon said the true
harm is the result of the way society responds to and treats people
who use cannabis. Every year hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens
are convicted of marijuana-related felonies and put behind bars, he
said, adding: "The harm comes from the lives blighted by criminal charges."

Grinspoon shared his skepticism about the conventional understanding
of marijuana in a paper originally published in the now defunct
International Journal of Psychiatry. A shorter version was published
in the December 1969 issue of Scientific American. And in 1971 Dr.
Grinspoon published his landmark book, "Marijuana Reconsidered," in
which he argues for a reassessment of the drug.

Grinspoon drew on more than academic study for his passionate
advocacy of medical marijuana.

In 1967, the same year he started his research, Grinspoon's
12-year-old son Danny was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia.
The prognosis was grave, but despite his illness, Danny took a close
interest in his father's efforts to write a book on marijuana.

By 1971 Danny's cancer treatments were causing him to experience
severe nausea and constant vomiting.

"He just didn't want to go in for his treatments," Grinspoon said.

By now Grinspoon was aware of an extensive body of anecdotal evidence
for the medical benefits of marijuana, including strong evidence that
cannabis is effective in the treatment of nausea and vomiting. But it
was difficult for him, as a medical professional, to take that final
step and agree to allow his son to use a prescribed drug.

"I said to myself, 'I can't, it's against the law.'"

Finally, his family took the matter into their own hands.

On the day of one of Danny's chemotherapy sessions, Grinspoon went to
the hospital to be with his son and family, only to discover an
unexpected scene.

"This day I walked in, and they were joking around while waiting for
the treatment.

And they told me he'd had a few puffs of marijuana in the parking lot
before he came in," Grinspoon recalled.

The marijuana provided Danny with extensive relief from the nausea
and vomiting.

And for Grinspoon, the experience of seeing his son's suffering
relieved by a drug society had judged to be dangerous, confirmed what
he was already beginning to believe: marijuana's benefits are real.

And those benefits were being denied to thousands of sick people
because society has come to believe cannabis is dangerous and those
who use it should be pursued and prosecuted.

"I started thinking to myself, 'my goodness, this is real. And what
if there are other kids out there who could be spared suffering,'" he said.

Grinspoon continued bringing the issues of medical marijuana and
marijuana legalization before the public, writing "Marijuana, The
Forbidden Medicine" with fellow researcher James Bakalar, and
launching websites, including www.marijuana-uses.com, which includes
essays and testimonials on marijuana use, including his own "To Smoke
or Not to Smoke: A Cannabis Odyssey," and an essay, "Mr. X," by the
late Carl Sagan, one of the world's most respected and renowned
astronomers, who used marijuana for most of his adult life.

And at the age of 80, Grinspoon and his wife Betsy continue their own
discovery of marijuana's "usefulness in the task of achieving
reconciliation with the aging process, including coming to terms with
the inevitable physical and emotional aches, deficits and losses."

Marijuana, he believes, "is a blessing."

And a day will come, he said, when attitudes about marijuana change,
and people will ask: "What was all the fuss about this substance?"