Pubdate: Thu, 22 Feb 2007
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2007 Independent Media Institute
Contact:  http://www.alternet.org/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1451
Author: Rob Kampia
Note: Rob Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy 
Project in Washington, DC.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?232 (Chronic Pain)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/walters.htm (Walters, John)

NEW STUDY SHOWS MEDICAL VALUE OF MARIJUANA

Ever since California and other states began passing medical 
marijuana laws in 1996, the federal government has claimed that -- as 
a 2003 White House press release put it -- "research has not 
demonstrated that smoked marijuana is safe and effective medicine." A 
new study, just published in the journal Neurology, definitively 
refutes that claim and underlines the urgent need for the federal 
government to change its prohibitionist policies.

The study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams of the University of 
California at San Francisco, found marijuana to be safe and effective 
at treating peripheral neuropathy, which causes great suffering to 
HIV/AIDS patients. This type of extreme pain, which is caused by 
damage to the nerves, can make patients feel like their feet and 
hands are on fire, or being stabbed with a knife. Similar pain is 
seen in a number of other illnesses, including multiple sclerosis and 
diabetes, and cannot be treated effectively with conventional pain 
medications. Standard pain medicines -- even addictive, dangerous 
narcotics -- have little effect on this type of pain.

Marijuana doesn't cure neuropathy, but in the UCSF study marijuana 
was clearly shown to give relief. In this randomized, double-blind, 
placebo-controlled trial (the design that's considered the "gold 
standard" of medical research), a majority of patients had a greater 
than 30 percent reduction in pain after smoking marijuana. For many, 
that level of relief means having a bearable quality of life.

This result is all the more remarkable because researchers like 
Abrams are only allowed to test government-supplied marijuana, which 
is of notoriously poor quality. There's every reason to believe the 
results would be even better if scientists were permitted to study a 
better-quality product.

Abrams' study is only the latest in a growing mountain of research 
showing that medical marijuana can provide real -- and potentially 
even life-saving -- benefits. In a study published last year of 
patients being treated for the hepatitis C virus (HCV), those who 
used marijuana to curb the nausea and other noxious side effects of 
anti-HCV drugs were significantly more likely to complete their 
treatment. As a result, the marijuana-using patients were three times 
more likely to clear the deadly virus from their bodies -- in other 
words, to be cured -- than those not using marijuana.

Clearly, the White House and its drug czar, John Walters, should 
abandon their rigid, unscientific rejection of medical marijuana and 
start reshaping federal policy to match medical reality.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely; what's more likely is that the Bush 
administration will ignore the scientific data during its last two 
years in power, just as it has for the past six years.

That puts the ball in Congress's court. There are a number of actions 
Congress can take to put federal medical marijuana policy on a path 
toward sanity.

The first, and simplest, is to prohibit the Drug Enforcement 
Administration from spending money to raid and arrest medical 
marijuana patients and caregivers in the 11 states where the medical 
use of marijuana is legal under state law. This taxpayer-friendly act 
would remove the cloud of fear that now hangs over tens of thousands 
of desperately ill Americans and those who care for them.

But that should be just the beginning. Everything about federal 
medical marijuana policy should be reconsidered. That includes the 
arbitrary rules that needlessly hamper research, as well as the 
absurd law that classifies cocaine and methamphetamine as having more 
medical value than marijuana, which is grouped with heroin and LSD as 
having "no currently accepted medical use."

The guiding principle must be to handle medical marijuana as science, 
common sense, and simple human decency dictate. Recent research 
leaves no doubt that our government's war on the sick and dying must 
end immediately.

Rob Kampia is executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in 
Washington, DC.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman