Food For Thought

The editorial in Thursday's Orlando Sentinel ("Snuff out pot petition") is sadly misguided. It's disingenuous to claim there is no scientific evidence of medical marijuana's effectiveness and safety; the government agencies responsible for approving such studies refuse to do so.

According to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), Dr. Donald Abrams, UC San Francisco, is the only researcher in the United States currently approved to study the medical use of smoked marijuana in a patient population. It took Abrams five and a half years to obtain FDA approval of his study, "Short Term Effects of Cannabinoids in HIV Patients," the first such research the FDA has approved in fifteen years. (The study was scheduled to begin last month.)

Government agencies deliberately hinder drug-related research. At one point, the NIDA, the only legal source of marijuana in the U.S., refused to supply marijuana to Dr. Abrams' initial protocol, despite FDA-approval! Not many researchers have the fortitude or the funding to spend more than five years trying to get a two-year study approved.

Another researcher, Dr. Ethan Russo, University of Montana, recently had his MAPS-supported NIH grant application ("Cannabis in Acute Migraine Treatment Project") rejected. Many of the NIH criticisms were contradictory; others called for "elements that the protocol in fact already contained," according to Russo's report in the Spring 1998 MAPS newsletter (www.maps.org/news-letters). Let's hope he has Dr. Abrams' persistence.

The political machinations that prevent development of safer and more effective weapons for the "battery of medications" show gross disregard for the patients who have trouble finding effective medication in the current arsenal. It is inhumane to deny them access to new, possibly more effective treatments. Some of these people aren't fighting for "their right to party" - they're fighting for their health, and in some cases, for their lives.

The reason medical marijuana proponents "talk as though only marijuana can treat pain, ease nausea or stimulate appetite" is that marijuana frequently is more effective than pharmaceutical drugs, and safer and cheaper as well. Home-grown marijuana is essentially free. Smoked marijuana acts quickly, so users easily self-titrate their doses to decrease side-effects; this is not possible with oral dronabinol (pharmaceutical THC). Even the high-THC marijuana that anti-drug factions consider dangerous is actually healthier than weaker marijuana because less smoke is required to get an effect.

The petition is no Trojan Horse filled with invading soldiers; it is our friends and family members expressing their compassion for the collateral casualties of the War on Drugs.