THE MEDICAL MARIJUANA MYSTERY

In 2001, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote a majority
opinion contending that marijuana has "no currently accepted medical
use." In the United States, this is true, but one cannot be sure
whether this is because marijuana truly has no medical use, or simply
because marijuana's medical benefits have not yet been proven.

In the coming weeks, Justice Thomas and the Supreme Court will again
hear a case involving marijuana. This pivotal suit tests the
California law which legalizes marijuana use for critically ill
patients. The federal government will argue that federal law--which
classifies marijuana as an illegal substance--takes precedence over
California law.

Unfortunately, the justices' role is to interpret the law, not to
decide whether it is wise or misguided. Thus, this case is more of a
test of federalism than an assessment of the medical utility of
marijuana. Nevertheless, if the government did attempt to make an
impartial examination of the latter, it would be hard pressed to make
an informed decision, as it would be forced to rely on contradictory,
even faulty scientific evidence.

Both sides of the issue, from the national campaign to vilify the drug
to the significant counter-culture that supports it are versed in
volumes of scientific data that appear to support their views, but
both positions are scientifically unjustifiable.

A cursory examination of the current scientific literature reveals
confusion and lack of consensus over whether marijuana has a valid
medical use, even over whether it harms its users at all. Dr. Howard
Shaffer, the editor of Psychology of Addictive Behaviors and Associate
Professor and Director of the Division on Addictions at Harvard
Medical School, wrote in an e-mail "The scientific community is
fractured on the medical use issue. Some argue that medical marijuana
can be very useful for dealing with the symptoms of certain diseases
or the treatment side effects. Others argue that we already have
drugswith the fundamental ingredient of marijuana. The argument is
that some people indicate that smoked marijuana is more effective than
the pharmaceutical form."

The only way to move beyond the hype, propaganda, and unsubstantiated
claims, is for the government to commit to an objective, scientific
investigation of marijuana.

The government's history of promoting research on the medical benefits
of marijuana is questionable at best. In February of 1997, a National
Institutes of Health-sponsored workshop concluded that "in order to
evaluate various hypotheses concerning the potential utility of
marijuana in various therapeutic areas, more and better studies would
be needed." In March of 1999, the Institute of Medicine published a
report that came to the same conclusion. Basically, the government
acknowledged its ignorance.

In 2001, the Department of Health and Human Services published a
report recommending that marijuana remain a Schedule I drug, meaning
it has no acceptable medicinal uses and represents a high risk of
abuse. However, in preparing this report the government glossed over
contradictory studies and even caveats in the articles that they did
cite. For example, in arguing that marijuana is dangerous because of a
"proven" potential for abuse in humans, the report discounts numerous
self-medication studies of animals that do not indicate a potential
for abuse. The report also fails to acknowledge the problems inherent
in conducting controlled research on humans who use marijuana, such as
the tendency of street marijuana to be laced with other substances, or
the fact that marijuana users frequently use other drugs.
Additionally, most of the studies that the Department of Health and
Human Services cited were cross-sectional and not longitudinal
studies, meaning that there is little evi! dence to show that cannabis
use is detrimental to its users in the long run.

From the little research conducted thus far, two drugs--which use a
synthetic version of the main active ingredient in marijuana--have
been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and are
currently on the U.S. market. Yet there are hundreds of other
compounds in botanical, or smoked, marijuana; their effects have never
been fully explored. Until they are, the government's assertion that
marijuana does not have a legitimate medical use rests on faulty
conclusions.

To be fair, a mechanism for government funding of cannabis research
exists, but it is insufficient. Research-grade marijuana is available
for "well-designed studies" through the Department of Health and Human
Services. Still, the government is far from encouraging this sort of
research, and there are many bureaucratic hurdles that must be cleared
before such research can be undertaken. According to Dr. Shaffer,
these obstacles significantly inhibit scientific interest and effort
towards understanding the medical applications of marijuana. "There is
some research going on regarding medical marijuana, but it is
limited," said Shaffer. "Scientists need special permission from the
governmentThe application process does not make it easy to study the
plant."

The only way to make informed decisions on how marijuana should be
used is to ground those decisions in hard scientific fact. Currently,
a critical mass of data that would incontrovertibly support or refute
marijuana's medical use is simply not available. The government should
devote funds to finding a scientifically sustainable answer to these
pressing questions. Until then, any laws or decisions pertaining to
marijuana are bound to be grounded in hype, myth and mystique.