Pubdate: Sun, 05 Aug 2001
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2001 The Sacramento Bee
Contact:  http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Herbert A. Sample, Sacramento Bee San Francisco Bureau

MEDICINAL POT STUDY UNDER WAY:

San Mateo County Says The Project Is A Preliminary Step Toward Large-scale 
Research Into The Subject.

SAN MATEO -- Phillip Alden has smoked marijuana -- legally, as far as 
California law is concerned -- for four years. An AIDS sufferer, Alden 
knows the drug reduces pain in his feet and hands, improves his appetite 
and controls nausea.

But the 37-year-old unemployed writer has not used marijuana for three 
weeks and will avoid the substance for three more weeks -- even as those 
symptoms creep back into his daily regime -- in the hope that his sacrifice 
eventually will lead the federal government to approve marijuana as a 
prescription medicine.

Alden is the first of five dozen patients who will participate in a 
first-of-its-kind study funded by San Mateo County. The study, its 
organizers hope, will pave the way for larger investigations into medicinal 
uses of marijuana involving hundreds of patients. The broader analyses, 
they anticipate, will prove that marijuana in one form or another can aid 
the ill. Alden, though, needs no convincing.

"In my mind, there's no question that marijuana should be available for 
medicinal (purposes)," he said. "We've opened the door. We've shown sick 
people that, here's something that helps you. And we're not going to be 
able to shut that door again."

The door has swung both ways in recent months. The U.S. Supreme Court 
struck a blow against medical marijuana proponents when it ruled in May 
that cannabis clubs prosecuted by federal authorities could not employ a 
medical-necessity defense.

But President George W. Bush's selection to head the federal Drug 
Enforcement Administration hedged when asked last month whether 
investigation of medicinal marijuana distributors and users would be a 
priority.

And studies delving further into medical marijuana are being planned. 
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, for instance, 
hope to soon look into whether cannabis can relieve nerve pain in AIDS 
sufferers. University of California, San Diego, doctors will examine 
marijuana's effects on multiple sclerosis patients.

The San Mateo study, however, is the first in which HIV patients who had 
previously used marijuana to lessen painful nerve ailments will be given 
federally grown pot to smoke at home. A control group of patients, which 
includes Alden, will be asked to refrain from using marijuana. After six 
weeks, members of the two groups will switch roles.

Because patients are being added on a continuing basis, the entire study 
could take two years to complete.

Some data will be collected on marijuana's impacts on the health of the 
patients, but the study is too small to draw firm conclusions. Instead, the 
goal is to determine the viability of conducting larger-scale studies of 
marijuana's impacts on the ill.

"I would call it the first step ... to determine how feasible it's going to 
be to do more definitive studies," said the study's organizer, Dr. Dennis 
Israelski, chief research officer at San Mateo County General Hospital.

One vital question Israelski will attempt to answer is whether the study's 
participants will misuse the marijuana they're given or provide it to 
someone else.

"To some extent, it's going to depend on trust," the doctor said. "There's 
just no way around it. There's no clear test that we can do that will tell 
us that patients are taking their marijuana as we have instructed."

But elaborate steps will help deter diversion. Patients will get only five 
cigarettes at a time and each will include filter-like tips that must be 
returned. Participants also will get three bottles -- one for unused 
cigarettes, one for joints as they are used and one for butts. Eventually, 
researchers hope to place microchips on the bottles to record when they are 
opened and closed.

San Mateo County is spending $500,000 to finance the study.

Israelski, who also is chief of infectious diseases at San Mateo General, 
says he remains unconvinced that marijuana is medicinally useful. But he is 
confident his research will identify limitations and obstacles that more 
expansive studies will face later.

"What's really great about this is that we have the scientific approach, 
but it's also being generated from sincere compassion amongst our political 
leaders," Israelski said.

That compassion has been led in San Mateo County by Supervisor Mike Nevin, 
a former San Francisco police officer who watched two friends in recent 
years battle cancer with chemotherapy and resist the treatment's side 
effects with marijuana.

Early in his 27 years on the force, he looked for the missing children of 
people who would call looking for help.

"You'd find their kids overdosed throughout the Haight-Ashbury district," 
said Nevin. "So I'm well aware of the dangers of drugs."

But as he listened to friends who smoked cannabis medicinally and looked 
into the subject more, Nevin concluded that marijuana appeared less harmful 
than other illegal drugs. He decided that Congress acted on political, not 
scientific, grounds 30 years ago when it placed marijuana on a list of the 
most dangerous contraband.

"Is this an effort to legalize marijuana? No, not in my case, it's not," he 
insisted. "I'm trying to answer the question once and for all -- either 
this substance should be considered as a pharmaceutical or shouldn't, for 
whatever reason."

The California Narcotics Officers' Association disagrees.

"It is our firm belief that any movement that liberalizes or legalizes 
substance abuse laws would set us back to the days of the '70s when we 
experienced this country's worst drug problem," a position paper from the 
group contends.

For Alden, who has suffered from AIDS for seven years but who still appears 
vibrant and healthy, the study represents something more personal.

Alden is not now taking one of the more noxious AIDS medications, though he 
has in the past and knows he will in the future. Marijuana, he said, is the 
only thing that checks its side effects. It also stimulates an appetite 
that otherwise would be ruined by a condition that makes it difficult to 
process food, he said.

Though the pain and decreased appetite have slowly returned in the last 
three weeks, Alden said he made the right decision to participate in the 
study. He recalled chats with AIDS, multiple sclerosis and cancer patients 
whom he would meet when picking up marijuana from a San Francisco cannabis 
club.

"Just from what I (saw)," Alden said, "I know there's a benefit to people 
who really, desperately need it."
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