DISSEMBLING ON MEDICAL POT

The Chicago Trubune Said In An Editorial April 23

The federal government has a long and dismal record of fighting the
idea that marijuana has any medical value, and it is not about to let
mere facts force a change in policy.

The Food and Drug Administration's new pronouncement on the subject is
just the latest disgraceful effort to maintain an unconvincing
position that has long been rejected by most Americans--not to mention
11 states that have legalized medical marijuana. Besides failing to
offer any new evidence for denying cannabis to patients who might
benefit from it, the agency also ignores the best information available.

The FDA statement came in response to a request from Rep. Mark Souder
(R-Ind.), chairman of the House Government Reform subcommittee, an
opponent of medical marijuana. It declares that "no human or animal
data supported the safety or efficacy of marijuana for general medical
use." Measures allowing it, says the agency, "would not serve the
interests of public health because they might expose patients to
unsafe and ineffective drug products."

Souder, who perceives efforts to permit cannabis therapy as a Trojan
horse for legalizing the drug entirely, seconded the FDA. Marijuana
can't be a good treatment, he asserted, "because it adversely impacts
concentration and memory, the lungs, motor coordination and the immune
system."

It may surprise Souder to learn that all sorts of valuable, federally
approved medicines may have serious adverse effects, which is not
grounds for banning them entirely. As it happens, there is ample
evidence that pot can ameliorate some serious ailments that don't
always respond to conventional treatments.

A 1999 analysis by the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy
of Sciences concluded that it is "moderately well suited for
particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and
vomiting and AIDS wasting." Medical marijuana has earned the
endorsement of The New England Journal of Medicine, the American
Academy of Family Physicians and numerous oncologists.

Its side effects, meanwhile, are exaggerated. In 1988, Francis Young,
the Drug Enforcement Agency's own administrative law judge, called
cannabis "one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to
man."

The FDA stoically pretends all this expert analysis doesn't exist. Its
statement is equally dishonest when it says there are no scientific
studies proving the value of marijuana--without acknowledging that the
government has generally declined to cooperate with scientists who
want to conduct clinical trials.

It's a classic scam. Says University of Massachusetts agronomist Lyle
Craker, who was refused permission to grow marijuana for his research,
in place of the low-quality stuff offered by the government, "The
reason there's no good evidence is that they don't want an honest trial."

There is plenty of room for serious debate about the therapeutic
potential of cannabis. But the government clearly thinks that what it
doesn't know can't hurt it.