IGNORANCE ISN'T BLISS

Voters in California and Arizona touched off a national debate five years
ago when they approved amendments to legalize marijuana use for medical
purposes: to relieve patients of pain and suffering. In reaction, the
federal government took steps to prevent doctors in those states from
prescribing marijuana as a pain-controller and cracked down on "medical-pot
clubs" in California.

But that probably won't prevent medical-marijuana initiatives from taking
root in other states.

The official position of the National Institutes of Health is that there is
little evidence to show that marijuana really has value as medicine. But
that bottom line comes with a qualification: to wit, there really aren't a
lot of studies out there to either prove or disprove the contention that
smoking marijuana can be faster and more effective than many prescription
medicines in easing the pain of patients suffering from cancer, AIDS and a
wide range of other diseases. Most of the evidence is anecdotal.

In fact, there have been virtually no federally sanctioned studies on the
subject since the early 1980s. Because the federal government controls all
of the legally grown marijuana in America, and because a number of federal
agencies must sign off on such studies, researchers have not been
aggressive in seeking out authorization.

But that may be changing. The Drug Enforcement Administration has recently
approved two medical-marijuana studies and is in the process of sanctioning
a third. All three will be conducted by universities in California. Two of
the studies will try to determine if smoking marijuana can effectively
relieve pain in multiple sclerosis patients, while a third will look at the
drug's efficacy in treating a condition common to HIV patients that causes
severe pain in the hands and feet.

"This is not much yet, but it is a recognition by the federal government
that it cannot prevent all work from going forward," Paul Armentano, of the
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told The New York
Times recently.

It's clear that the debate over the use of medical marijuana isn't going to
go away. Advocacy groups such as NORML will continue to support citizen
initiatives. And, if California and Arizona results are any example, voters
appear to be sympathetic to the idea of allowing marijuana use for medical
purposes. For their part, officials who take a hard line against drugs
cannot simply continue to argue in dogmatic fashion that marijuana has no
medical value. In the absence of scientific evidence one way or another,
such arguments will ultimately lose credibility.

In short, ignorance is not bliss in regard to the issue of medical
marijuana. The more researchers learn about the potential medicinal value
of marijuana, the better. Whether it's made by citizen initiative or via
the legislative process, public health policy should not fashioned without
benefit of all the factual evidence that can be mustered.

Critics say the dearth of research on the medicinal properties of marijuana
over the past two decades has been the result of a de facto ban on
marijuana studies. Whether that's true or not, it is appropriate to move
forward with appropriate studies.