WHEN IT'S OK TO INHALE

Last month, officials in a California town aided and abetted the
distribution of marijuana as hundreds of residents cheered. To get the pot,
Santa Cruz residents had to meet qualifications, one of which was that they
be ill.

Cannabis relieves both pain and nausea. Accordingly, California has passed
a law permitting the drug to be used for those purposes. Anti-drug zealotry
has led the feds to oppose the law, however. Hence, armed with a U.S.
Supreme Court ruling that the federal ban on pot trumps state law, drug
enforcement agents have been raiding California farms that grow marijuana
for medicinal purposes, uprooting the plants and arresting the growers.

To protest, Santa Cruz officials staged a rally that featured a marijuana
giveaway. Mayor Christopher Krohn told The New York Times: "This is not an
attempt to embarrass the (Drug Enforcement Administration), but rather a
compassionate gathering in support of sick people who need their medicine."

The federal government, according to DEA chief Asa Hutchinson, doesn't
object to the use of marijuana's active ingredient, THC, for medicinal
purposes - providing it is prescribed by physicians in that form. The drug,
he says, ought to be subject to the same rigorous tests as other
prescription drugs. The problem with marijuana as an inhaled product, he
adds, is that the patient also ingests carcinogens similar to those in
cigarettes.

Cigarettes, of course, are addictive, legal products with no medicinal
purpose, which suggests some inconsistency in Hutchinson's position.
Curiously, the government manages to think more flexibly and realistically
about other, harder drugs. For instance, it outlaws - as it should - the
recreational use of morphine, but permits doctors to prescribe the narcotic
to kill pain.

Why can't marijuana in inhaled form enjoy similar, dual status? After all,
the experts note that it provides relief to terminally ill patients. It's
possible that part of the medicinal effect is psychological - the ritual of
smoking a joint. So what? Some patients prefer marijuana to morphine as a
painkiller because the former keeps them more alert. Yet, irrationally,
federal policy steers patients to the more addictive drug.

Federal law ought to permit doctors to prescribe marijuana where
appropriate. Sure, the authorities would have to monitor its sale to guard
against abuse, just as they do with other prescription drugs. But if
Congress lacks the gumption to pass such a law, the federal government at
least ought to stay out of the way of states doing the right thing.