MINISTRY APPROVES MARIJUANA FOR TERMINAL PATIENT

The Health Ministry recently gave a terminally-ill cancer patient
permission to smoke marijuana to ease his suffering. The ministry's
approval was rushed through the required channels because of the patient's
serious condition.

Over the past six years, the ministry has given similar permission to eight
others, accepting half the requests it received. The director- general of
the Health Ministry, Dr. Boaz Lev, said the permit had been expedited due
to the patient's condition and the accompanying medical problems.

Four weeks ago, the patient's attorney, Avraham Bardugo, asked the Health
Ministry to allow his client to use marijuana to alleviate his suffering,
in accordance with recommendations of his doctors.

"It is quite clear the patient is exceeding the quantity of medications
prescribed to him and the doctors are turning a blind eye and are
continuing to supply him with the drugs in light of his condition," Bardugo
wrote to Yitzhak Berlowitz, deputy director- general at the Health
Ministry. "It appears marijuana will reduce the quantity of morphine-based
drugs he is taking outside all proportion." Bardugo's correspondence with
the Health Ministry showed the the patient as "a man on his death bed for
whom every moment brings suffering and torture."

In October 1999, a Health Ministry panel, headed by Lev, determined that
treatment with marijuana would be permitted in extreme cases to alleviate
suffering coming directly from a patient's illness. An advisory board at
the ministry deals with each request concerning the use of marijuana,
making its decision based on the recommendations of the patient's doctors
and the medical records and documents it receives.

Marijuana is used to stimulate the appetites of AIDS patients, to prevent
nausea and pain in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy, and to ease the
suffering of people with multiple sclerosis.