Medical Marijuana?
The active ingredients in marijuana can help fight pain
and nausea and thus deserve to be tested in scientific
trials, an advisory panel to the U.S. federal government
said today in a report sure to reignite the debate over
whether marijuana is a helpful or harmful drug. The
Institute of Medicine also said there was no conclusive
evidence that marijuana use leads to harder drugs.
Asked to examine the issue by the White House drug policy
office, 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. The
institute, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences,
provides the federal government with independent scientific
advice. It is paid by the organizations requesting its
advice, in this case the drug-policy office.
But the panel warned that smoking marijuana can cause
respiratory disease and called for the development of
standardized 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 panel urged clinical trials to determine the usefulness
of marijuana in treating muscle spasms. While it also has
been promoted as a treatment for glaucoma, the panel said
smoked marijuana only temporarily reduces some of the eye
pressure associated with that disease.
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 headed by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey 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 stockbroker in Boca Raton,
Florida who has smoked marijuana supplied by the federal
government for 27 years due to 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," said Rosenfeld. He suffers
from tumors that press into the muscles at the end of long
bones. The marijuana relaxes those muscles, keeping them
from being torn by the tumors and allowing him to move
with less pain. Rosenfeld is one of just eight people in
the U.S. getting marijuana from the government because of
unusual diseases.
Voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon and
Washington have approved measures in support of medical
marijuana, even though critics say such measures send the
wrong message to kids.
Congress has taken a hard line on the issue, with the
House of Representatives last fall adopting by a vote
of 310-93 a resolution that said marijuana was a
dangerous and addictive drug and should not be legalized
for medical use.
Opponents of medical use of marijuana long have claimed
that it is a "gateway" drug, giving people a start on the
road to more dangerous drugs, such as heroin and cocaine.
But the report concludes there is "no conclusive evidence
that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to
subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs." In fact, the report
concludes, most drug users did not begin with marijuana but
rather started by using tobacco and alcohol while they were
underage.
Daniel Zingale of AIDS Action said he is "pleased that the
study validates the benefits of medicinal marijuana."
Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project said the report
"shoots down" claims that marijuana has no medical benefits.
The New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized in
favor of medical marijuana, and the American Medical
Association has urged the federal National Institutes of
Health to support more research on the subject.
An expert panel formed by NIH found in 1997 that existing
research showed some patients could be helped by the drug,
principally to relieve nausea after cancer chemotherapy or
to increase AIDS patients' appetites. The drug has also
helped some patients control glaucoma, that panel found.
