Source: The Examiner (Ireland)



Pubdate: 18 March 1999





ubject: US urged by panel to give medical trial to marijuana 



THE active ingredients in marijuana can help fight pain and nausea and

deserve to be tested in scientific trials, says a US federal advisory panel.



The Institute of Medicine also said there was no conclusive evidence that

marijuana use leads to harder drugs.



The report is certain to reignite the debate over whether marijuana is a

helpful or harmful drug. In the past few years, voters in Alaska, Arizona,

California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have approved measures

in support of the medicinal marijuana, even though critics say such

measures send the wrong message to kids.



Congress has taken a hard line on the issue. The US House last autumn

adopted by 310-93 vote a resolution that said marijuana was a dangerous and

addictive drug and should not be legalised for medical use.



The White House drug policy office asked the institute, which is an

affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, to examine the issue.



The institute said that because the chemicals in marijuana ease anxiety,

stimulate the appetite, ease pain and reduce nausea and vomiting, they can

be helpful for people undergoing chemotherapy and people with Aids. But the

panel warned that smoking marijuana can cause respiratory disease and

called for the development of standardised forms of the drugs, called

cannabinoids, that can be taken, for example, by inhaler.



"Marijuana has potential as medicine, but it is undermined by the fact that

patients must inhale harmful smoke," said Stanley Watson of the Mental

Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, one of the study's

principal investigators. Even so, the panel said, there may be cases where

patients could in the meantime get relief from smoked marijuana, especially

since it might take years to develop an inhaler.



The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it would

carefully study the recommendations.



"We note in the report's conclusion that the future of cannabinoid drugs

lies not in smoked marijuana, but in chemically defined drugs" delivered by

other means, the office said in a statement.



One patient called the findings long overdue.



"It's taken a long time, but I feel like now, people will stand up and

listen," said Irvin Rosenfeld, a Florida stockbroker who has smoked

marijuana supplied by the federal government for 27 years because of a rare

medical condition. "When you have a devastating disease, all you care about

is getting the right medicine ... and not having to worry about being made

a criminal."



Rosenfeld suffers from tumours that press into the muscles at the end of

long bones. The marijuana relaxes those muscles, allowing him to move with

less pain. Rosenfeld is one of just eight people in the US receiving

marijuana from the government because of unusual diseases.





Daniel Zingale of Aids Action said he was: "Pleased the study validates

the benefits of medicinal marijuana."



Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project said the report shot down

claims marijuana had no medical benefits.