LEGAL DRUG USE SLOWED

Medical marijuana advocates say there are two key reasons the drug is so
difficult to legalize for sick people at the federal level: Money and politics.

Maryland recently became the ninth state to pass a law that would relax
punishment of people caught with marijuana, provided they can prove they
are using it for medical reasons.

"As more and more states get on board, the feds are going to have to do
something. They just can't arrest everyone in every state," said Donald
Murphy, chairman of the Baltimore County Republican party. As a state
delegate, he championed legislation that would have legalized medical
marijuana.

The financial issue is tied in with pharmaceuticals, advocates said.

"The medical community has Marinol, which has synthetic THC, and it costs
$10 to $20 to take it in pill form," Mr. Murphy said.

"Pharmaceuticals, they don't want to try and re-create marijuana because
there's no money in it," Mr. Murphy said. "Even if you had a pill to do the
same thing, how much would people pay for it? If you could pay $10 for two
months' worth, would you spend the same thing for one afternoon?"

"The problem is, there's no financial interest to use millions of dollars
to test it, because you're talking about a plant people can grow in their
back yard. There's no financial incentive," said Bruce Mirken of the
Marijuana Policy Project.

Mr. Mirken said some argue the Food and Drug Administration should approve
marijuana as it would for another medicine.

Kathleen Quinn, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,
said drugs are approved only after a company submits an application.
Companies do their own testing; the FDA might ask questions, but the agency
does not initiate approval.

There are so many variations of opiates and opioids approved by the FDA
because they're lucrative for pharmaceutical companies, Mr. Mirken said.

Dr. Tony Tommasello is director of the office of substance abuse studies at
University of Maryland School of Pharmacy. At one time he supported Marinol
over medical marijuana.

"The idea that we're going to give people crude products instead of a
certified product, that would be a question for a pharmacist," he said.

Without quality control, patients wouldn't know the percentage of active
ingredients.

"The rebuttal is, people with HIV are already nauseated with medications,
and they don't want to take another oral product," Dr. Tommasello said.
"That's a valid argument."

"The whole mission behind cancer treatment is to poison you," state Sen.
David Brinkley, R-Frederick, who helped push the legislation through the
Senate. "Treatment can make you sicker than the disease" and make
swallowing a pill next to impossible, he said.

But Dr. Tommasello still believes there are potential dangers to
prescribing marijuana. There is more tar than in cigarette smoke, Dr.
Tommasello said, touching a debate.

"The challenge for medical marijuana is to develop an alternative way of
inhaling," he said. "It could be aerosolized, like nicotine."

Or it can be vaporized, Mr. Mirken said, which would eliminate the risks
associated with smoking. A device would heat up the leaves, enabling the
patient to inhale the drug without lighting it on fire.

The New York State Association of County Health Officials recently
recommended legalizing traditional marijuana for medical purposes,
contending that "the legalization of medical marijuana would be a step
forward for the health of all New Yorkers."

"I think if the market was bigger then pharmaceuticals would respond," Dr.
Tommasello said. "But it's a relatively small market, because people can
get it so easily through the black market. I think that's what the bill
corrects, or at least addresses."

Mr. Mirken rejects the traditional argument: Marijuana is the gateway drug
that will lead people to become addicts.

"Physicians prescribe thousands of medications every day that are much more
dangerous than this is," Mr. Mirken said. "Ask any heroin addict on the
street what they tried first, and they probably did smoke marijuana at one
time. But ask them what they started with, and it's probably alcohol or
cigarettes, so marijuana is not the gateway drug."

"One of the big objections is, that it still is illegal at the federal
level," Mr. Brinkley said. "So the law we have goes with federal laws, but
they need to change that."

"It's pure politics," Mr. Murphy agreed. "Most of this comes from the
federal level, and drugs are placed into certain schedules. Marijuana is a
schedule one drug, so it's considered highly addictive, subject to abuse
and is seen to have no medical value."

Mr. Murphy said schedule two drugs, such as morphine and cocaine, are the
same but are deemed to have medical merit.

In 1998, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett was one of the congressmen who voted against
changing marijuana's schedule. First, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bartlett said
the Republican congressman had never voted on the issue and would not comment.

However, after uncovering the 1998 medical marijuana bill that Mr. Bartlett
voted unfavorably on, spokeswoman Lisa Wright cited two reasons for the
vote: Marinol and National Institutes of Health studies.

The NIH has said that smoking marijuana could cause harmful effects on the
lungs, and Ms. Wright contends that Marinol can deliver the same benefits
of marijuana.

"Democrats should know better, their base certainly approves of this," Mr.
Murphy said. Mr. Murphy launched an organization called Republicans for
Compassionate Access, which is dedicated to convincing representatives that
"this is not political suicide, and that it is consistent with everything
they have championed with votes in Annapolis," Mr. Murphy said.