MARIJUANA HAS MANY PROVEN MEDICAL BENEFITS

The claim in your editorial that the medical benefits of marijuana are
"purely speculative" is incorrect ("Marijuana too risky for pediatric
care," CT, April 21).

In a 1999 study commissioned by the White House, the Institute of
Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences concluded, "Nausea,
appetite loss, pain and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and
all can be mitigated by marijuana."

Dozens of scientific studies document that marijuana and its active
components, called cannabinoids, can relieve nausea, muscle spasticity
associated with multiple sclerosis and pain from a variety of causes
- -- including pain that is refractory to standard treatments. In an
April 2003 review of the data, The Lancet Neurology noted,
"Cannabinoids inhibit pain in virtually every experimental pain paradigm."

The "New England Journal of Medicine," the most respected medical
journal in the world, has called for legal access to medical marijuana
- -- so have the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American
Public Health Association, American Nurses Association, American
Academy of HIV Medicine and dozens of other medical and public health
organizations. In its January 30, 1997 editorial, the "New England
Journal of Medicine" noted that opposition to medical marijuana comes
primarily from "bureaucrats whose decisions are based more on
reflexive ideology and political correctness than on
compassion."

The journal's words are even truer today than they were seven years ago.

Bruce Mirken

Director of Communications

Marijuana Policy Project