Source: ABCNEWS.com Copyright: 1998 ABC News Pubdate: 28 Oct 1998 Contact: http://www.abcnews.com/service/abc_contactus.html Website: http://www.abcnews.com/ Note: Not really sure if/how ABC used this story in it's news broadcasts. It is interesting that they use a quote from someone from the Partnership for a Drug Free America to lead the item. An objective source? - Richard Lake, Sr. Editor STIRRING THE POT 5 States Consider Marijuana Initiatives “It’s better to make doctors and scientists decide what medicine to use through the process of the FDA, than to have John Doe standing in a voting booth decide.” - Leigh Leventhal, PDFA The debate about marijuana as a gateway drug has shifted from classrooms to ballot booths. In school, smoking pot was condemned as the first step toward serious drug addiction. Now, critics say ballot initiatives that would legalize medical marijuana are a gateway between alternative therapy and the corruption of national drug policy. “What I would like to do is make the argument …,” said drug czar Barry McCaffrey at a Washington press conference Tuesday, “that these initiatives are simply not in accordance with good science, ignore the safety of the American people and send a bad message.” With allied law enforcers and health officials by his side, McCaffrey urged voters to reject initiatives in Alaska, Nevada, Oregon, Washington state and California that would make marijuana legal, to varying degrees, for medicinal purposes. Proponents say marijuana, specifically in smoked form, has a range of valuable uses. Among the ailments pot is said to relieve are arthritis, premenstrual syndrome, nausea from chemotherapy, and the extreme weight loss associated with AIDS. Are Voters Qualified? But there’s no science to back up those claims, say drug policy officials, and further, there’s no precedent for letting citizens decide for themselves which drugs should be approved for public use. “What we are saying is that we question whether this is the best way to make a law,” says Leigh Leventhal, a spokeswoman for the Partnership for a Drug Free America. “Medical marijuana is a medical issue and we feel that this is really best left to the medical community to decide. “It’s better to make doctors and scientists decide what medicine to use through the process of the FDA [Federal Drug Administration], than to have John Doe standing in a voting booth decide,” she says. “The way we make medicine in this country is tried and true, and they have to go through those rigors.” But proponents of medical marijuana say they are resorting to ballot initiatives only because the government, unwilling to conduct new studies or honor old ones, has left them no other choice. “There are two tracks going on this right now,” says Allen St. Pierre, the executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws [NORML]. “One is the NIH [National Institutes of Health] study, and all it’s doing is placating us by going back and reviewing all of the ’60s ’70s and ’80s studies.” “The other is the Donald Abrams study, a $1 million study to look at AIDS patients that would have cost $50,000 in 1991.” The initial question in the Abrams study, St. Pierre says, was to see if marijuana helped patients gain weight. “But after six years as a bureaucratic study, now it asks ‘Does marijuana impact the immune systems of AIDS patients?’ So one is a non-study, and one is a study with big, fat asterisks,” St. Pierre says. To Inhale or Not to Inhale McCaffrey and other critics denounce marijuana proponents’ assertions that it’s relatively safe. They point to NIH research showing that side effects of marijuana use include lung damage, rapid heart beat, loss of coordination, and impaired short-term memory. And the verdict, the researchers say, is still out on its damage to long-term memory. Foes of marijuana smoking also say a variety of already approved drugs with well-known side effects—including the orally administered form of marijuana’s active ingredient, THC—that can serve patients better. Dr. Lester Grinspoon, associate professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School and author of several pro-marijuana books, counters that the drug is safe. He says evidence, even if it is anecdotal, proves it. “This drug is among the least toxic substances we know of,” says Grinspoon. “When I as a physician write a prescription, I do a risk-benefit analysis. Is the disorder that you’re suffering enough that I know I should give you a medicine with side effects? Nearly all medicines, even common ones like ibuprofen and aspirin, have side effects that cause thousands of deaths annually, Grinspoon says. “And yet these are considered over-the-counter drugs. Now you tell me about [marijuana], which has never killed anybody, and yet you can go to jail if you get caught with it.” Mixed Messages But McCaffrey warns legalizing even controlled amounts of marijuana for specific usage sends a bad message to the American public, especially to children. “People ask me what the most dangerous drug in America is, and I would argue unequivocally, it’s poly-drug abuse, alcohol and marijuana combined by American adolescents,” he says. “Because we know that young people between the ages of 9 and 18 that are involved in a lot of pot smoking and alcohol consumption have enormously increased statistical risks of ending up as compulsive drug users as adults.” To combat this, the government has spent millions of dollars on campaigns that tell kids to “Just Say No;” that a brain on drugs resembles a fried egg, or a destroyed kitchen. Now, in five states, the question is: If a pocket of states sanctions marijuana’s medicinal use, will it undermine the nation’s efforts to combat illicit drug use? Polls show voters in four of those states seem poised to say yes. The final answer will come on Election Day. - --- Checked-by: Richard Lake