FDA'S MISSIVE AGAINST MEDICAL POT

Health Agency Bolsters DEA's Position, Leaps into Another Political
Hot-Button Issue

Washington -- The Food and Drug Administration declared Thursday that
"no sound scientific studies" support the medical use of smoked
marijuana. The statement, which contradicts a 1999 review by top
government scientists, inserts the health agency into yet another
fierce political fight.

Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said the statement resulted from a
combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research
agencies that concluded that "smoked marijuana has no currently
accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an
approved medical treatment." She said that the FDA was issuing the
statement because of numerous inquiries from Capitol Hill but would
probably do nothing to enforce it.

"Any enforcement based on this finding would need to be by DEA, since
this falls outside of FDA's regulatory authority," she said.

Eleven states -- including California -- have legalized medicinal uses
of marijuana, but the Drug Enforcement Administration and the nation's
drug czar, John Walters, have opposed those efforts. A Supreme Court
decision last year allowed the federal government to arrest anyone
using marijuana, even in states that have legalized its use.

Congressional opponents and supporters of medical marijuana have each
tried to enlist the FDA to support their views. Rep. Mark Souder,
R-Ind., a fierce opponent of medical marijuana initiatives, proposed
legislation two years ago that would have required the FDA to issue an
opinion on the medicinal properties of the drug.

Souder believes that efforts to legalize medicinal uses of marijuana
are "a front" for efforts to legalize all uses of marijuana, said
Martin Green, a spokesman for Souder.

Tom Riley, a spokesman for Walters, hailed the FDA statement, saying
that it would put to rest "the bizarre public discussion" that has led
11 states to legalize the drug's use.

The FDA statement directly contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute
of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's
most prestigious scientific evaluative agency. That review found
marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions,
such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting."

Dr. John Benson, co-chair of the Institute of Medicine committee that
examined the research into marijuana's effects, said in an interview
that the FDA statement and the combined review by other agencies were
wrong.

The federal government "loves to ignore our report," said Benson, a
professor of internal medicine at the University of Nebraska Medical
Center. "They would rather it never happened."

Some scientists and legislators said that the agency's statement about
marijuana demonstrates that politics is trumping science there.

"Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the FDA making
pronouncements that seem to be driven more by ideology than by
science," said Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor at Harvard Medical School.

Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., who has sponsored legislation seeking to
allow medicinal uses of marijuana, said the statement reflected the
influence of the DEA, which he said had long pressured the FDA to help
in its fight against marijuana.

Dan Troy, the FDA's former general counsel, said that the FDA and DEA
often disagree about drug policies, but marijuana "is a place where
FDA and DEA can cooperate."

The FDA statement said that state initiatives that legalize marijuana
use "are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo
the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process."

But scientists studying marijuana said in interviews that the federal
government has actively discouraged research into marijuana's benefits.

Dr. Donald Abrams, a professor of clinical medicine at UCSF, said that
he has studied marijuana's medicinal effects for years but has been
frustrated because the National Institutes of Health has refused to
fund such work.

With funding from the state of California, he undertook what he said
was a rigorous, placebo-controlled trial of marijuana smoking in HIV
patients who suffered from nerve pain. Smoking marijuana proved
effective in ameliorating patients' pain, but he is having trouble
getting the study published, he said.

"One wonders how anyone could" fulfill the FDA request for
well-controlled trials to prove marijuana's benefits, he said.