GOOD MEDICINE

Maryland Gov. Ehrlich's Signature on Marijuana Bill Shows an Enlightened
Outlook.

Maryland Ratifies Value of Medical Marijuana; Will Virginia Make It a Joint
Policy?

Credit Maryland Gov. Robert Ehrlich for signing a bill that softens the
penalty for possessing marijuana in cases of "medical necessity." This one
he approved from the heart, brushing aside arguments that such a change
would create a loophole for traffic in a controlled substance.

That's unlikely. Maryland did not legalize pot. It just reduced the fine
for having it from $1,000 to $100. Meanwhile, the change is embraced by an
exclusive club: the victims of certain agonizing diseases and their loved
ones. This circle of medical-marijuana proponents believes that people
shouldn't have to suffer if there's an ethical way to stop it. They contend
that smoking the plant provides relief that conventional medicines--even
pills with marijuana's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol--just don't
deliver. Making possession in these cases a sub-misdemeanor seems right.

What's the science say? A 1999 study by the Institutes of Medicine of the
National Academy of Sciences offered a mixed judgment. It found that
medical marijuana had potential value to treat pain, nausea, and wasting
associated with HIV, but that smoked pot heightened the risk for
cancer--just as cigarette smoking does. The obvious response is that
relieving existential pain now is more important than evading hypothetical
malignancies. Medical practice, in fact, agrees: The very radiation used to
shrink deadly tumors can precipitate future cancers.

Gov. Ehrlich, a Republican, is a member of the club. As his brother-in-law
lay dying, the politician recognized that closely controlled,
doctor-prescribed marijuana could have made the man's last days better. As
a congressman, he co-sponsored a bill that would have freed states to enact
their own laws on the matter. It failed.

Nevertheless, eight states--Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California,
Colorado, Nevada, and Maine--have legalized medical marijuana by skirting
the language of federal statutes that bar it. All but Hawaii held
referenda, meaning that lawmakers in those states, fearing political
fallout, let the voters decide. Meanwhile, Virginia rationally repealed a
1979 statute that allowed M.D.s to prescribe marijuana in certain cases
without fear of prosecution. The law was a sham because even if a doctor
wanted to employ the weed, it wasn't exactly stocked at the local CVS.

For Virginia lawmakers to reapprove medical-use marijuana, epiphanies need
to occur. First, legislators must shed the notion that marijuana is simply
taboo. It isn't, as popular policies in other states prove. Second, they
must realize that marijuana shouldn't be lumped with drugs such as crack
and LSD that have no real medicinal value. Third, they should study the
research that says marijuana, while no panacea for victims of AIDS, cancer,
glaucoma, and so on, nonetheless reduces the chronic distress associated
with such diseases or their treatment.

Gov. Ehrlich's action shows that medicalizing marijuana is hardly the pet
idea of some post-hippie liberal elite. The policy is supported primarily
by witnesses to possibly needless human pain.