Pubdate: 15 May 2001 Source: Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA) Copyright: 2001 Richmond Newspapers Inc. Contact: http://www.timesdispatch.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/365 Author: A.J. Hostetler, Times-Dispatch Writer DATA NOT YET IN POT'S CORNER VCU scientist: Public opinion works faster The drive to allow patients the legal use of marijuana to alleviate pain and suffering will have to come from the public, not the courts or legislators, says a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher. Billy R. Martin, who heads VCU's pharmacology and toxicology department, helped craft a federal report calling for further study on the drug's medical uses. The 1999 report summarized the status of marijuana research for the Institute of Medicine, which advises Congress on medical issues. It said more study was needed to determine whether and how much desperately ill patients could benefit from pot. Then, as now, the issue of medical marijuana rested more on politics than science, Martin said yesterday. Although there are plenty of personal accounts, there is just not enough clear-cut scientific evidence that marijuana eases anxiety and pain, stimulates the appetite and reduces nausea and vomiting, he said. "Science, for marijuana, is not going to play much of a role" in the drug's legalization as medical treatment, he said. "This is really going to be a political decision rather than a scientific decision." He said patient advocacy groups and grass-roots supporters, not scientists such as himself, wield the necessary influence to change the federal law banning pot. "It really comes down to what various groups of people consider acceptable evidence," Martin said. Yesterday's Supreme Court ruling will not affect ongoing marijuana research, much of which examines the multiple roles played in the brain by pot's psychoactive ingredient, THC, said Martin, who has studied the drug for more than two decades. If the court ruling had favored medical marijuana, in some ways that would have made the research not necessary, he said, because there would have been less need to prove the benefits of the drug. Martin said he did not know of anyone in Virginia who had sought and received marijuana under the 1979 state law allowing physicians to prescribe and pharmacists to dispense medicinal marijuana to cancer and glaucoma patients without the parties involved facing prosecution. Critics of marijuana's medical use note that a drug based on THC is on the market. Marinol is federally approved to treat nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, as well as the anorexia and wasting that AIDS patients often suffer. But marijuana advocates say it does not work as well as the real thing. While smoked marijuana also has been promoted as a treatment for glaucoma, the Institute of Medicine report concluded it only temporarily reduces some of the eye pressure associated with the disease. The New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized in favor of medical marijuana, and the American Medical Association has urged the National Institutes of Health to support more research on the subject. - --- MAP posted-by: Andrew