MEDICAL MARIJUANA: IS NATION GOING TO POT?

The Bush administration's efforts to ban the medical use of marijuana may
have just gone up in smoke.

The Supreme Court last week let stand a ruling that bars the federal
government from punishing doctors who recommend it to their patients.

This should clear the path for Congress to reclassify marijuana, allowing
for its use when prescribed by a doctor.

Doctors should decide whether pot is good or bad for a patient, not the
Bush administration's lead man in the war against drugs, who wouldn't know
an ulcer from heartburn.

President Bush's drug czar, John P. Walters, who believes medical marijuana
will turn the U.S. into a nation of potheads, rails against doctors who
prescribe pot as passionately as he does against drug lords who grow coca
in the jungles of Colombia.

The hospital room of a cancer patient should not be made a battlefield in
this nation's unsuccessful war on drugs, nor should the doctor who treats
the patient be treated as an enemy soldier.

The refusal of the justices to even hear the federal government's challenge
should send a signal to anyone who thinks that marijuana invariably leads
to abuse of more dangerous drugs. There is no evidence of that. Studies by
the federal Institute of Medicine, the American Medical Association and the
New England Journal of Medicine recognize the benefits of marijuana when
prescribed by a doctor to relieve pain and nausea.

We hope this opens the door to the doctor's office for tens of thousands of
ill people who might benefit.

Federal law categorizes marijuana as a "schedule 1" drug under the
Controlled Substances Act, but it is clearly time that Congress amended the
legislation. Lawmakers are sensitive to the political ramifications of such
a change, but we doubt a majority actually believes that medical marijuana
undermines the nation's war on drugs.

It is worth repeating that the United States has the best hospitals, the
finest doctors and the most modern medicines in the world, but its views on
marijuana are primitive.

The sky will not fall, nor will the nation go to pot if doctors are able to
give ill patients some relief from the symptoms of their diseases or
treatments.