Pubdate: Sun, 08 Nov 1998 Source: Associated Press Copyright: 1998 Associated Press. Author: Michelle Boorstein NEARLY NO RESEARCH DONE ON POT Despite ongoing controversy over marijuana's medical efficacy, almost no research is being done on the topic. Some proponents of medical marijuana say sufficient research was performed in the 1970s and '80s, when the federal government provided marijuana for studies done mostly by states. Many of those studies were suspended in 1991 when the National Institutes of Health concluded there wasn't enough proof that marijuana would be better than a synthetic version of tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the drug's major chemical component. Proponents said the studies were going to prove the opposite, but the government stopped supplying the marijuana. Work was mostly suspended until 1996, when California and Arizona passed initiatives to legalize marijuana and other drugs for medical use. An expert panel formed by the Institutes of Health found in August 1997 that existing research showed some patients can be helped by the drug, principally to relieve nausea after cancer chemotherapy or to increase AIDS patients' appetites. The drug also has helped some patients control glaucoma, the panel found. The institutes' director, Dr. Harold Varmus, said at the time that applications for marijuana research were welcome, but the agency has approved only one project, a study of smoked marijuana in AIDS patients. "The government is saying out of one side of its mouth that we need more research, but then they don't provide the marijuana," said Bill Zimmerman, director of Americans for Medical Rights, a private advocacy group which sponsors state initiatives to legalize medical marijuana. Others, however, say research isn't funded because marijuana is so hard to study. It's difficult to create a placebo that accurately replicates the experience of smoking the drug and to measure how much of the drug each patient ingests from the smoke. In addition, no drug companies are lined up to invest in it. "There isn't a government conspiracy to discourage it," said Dr. Reese Jones, a psychiatry professor at University of California-San Francisco and a longtime marijuana researcher. "The issue is, what else are we not going to do in order to pay for it?" - --- Checked-by: Patrick Henry