Pubdate: 18 March 1999 Source: Examiner, The (Ireland) Copyright: Examiner Publications Ltd, 1999 Contact: http://www.examiner.ie/ US URGED BY PANEL TO GIVE MEDICAL TRIAL TO MARIJUANA THE active ingredients in marijuana can help fight pain and nausea and deserve to be tested in scientific trials, says a US federal advisory panel. The Institute of Medicine also said there was no conclusive evidence that marijuana use leads to harder drugs. The report is certain to reignite the debate over whether marijuana is a helpful or harmful drug. In the past few years, voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have approved measures in support of the medicinal marijuana, even though critics say such measures send the wrong message to kids. Congress has taken a hard line on the issue. The US House last autumn adopted by 310-93 vote a resolution that said marijuana was a dangerous and addictive drug and should not be legalised for medical use. The White House drug policy office asked the institute, which is an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, to examine the issue. The institute said that because the chemicals in marijuana ease anxiety, stimulate the appetite, ease pain and reduce nausea and vomiting, they can be helpful for people undergoing chemotherapy and people with Aids. But the panel warned that smoking marijuana can cause respiratory disease and called for the development of standardised forms of the drugs, called cannabinoids, that can be taken, for example, by inhaler. "Marijuana has potential as medicine, but it is undermined by the fact that patients must inhale harmful smoke," said Stanley Watson of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, one of the study's principal investigators. Even so, the panel said, there may be cases where patients could in the meantime get relief from smoked marijuana, especially since it might take years to develop an inhaler. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it would carefully study the recommendations. "We note in the report's conclusion that the future of cannabinoid drugs lies not in smoked marijuana, but in chemically defined drugs" delivered by other means, the office said in a statement. One patient called the findings long overdue. "It's taken a long time, but I feel like now, people will stand up and listen," said Irvin Rosenfeld, a Florida stockbroker who has smoked marijuana supplied by the federal government for 27 years because of a rare medical condition. "When you have a devastating disease, all you care about is getting the right medicine ... and not having to worry about being made a criminal." Rosenfeld suffers from tumours that press into the muscles at the end of long bones. The marijuana relaxes those muscles, allowing him to move with less pain. Rosenfeld is one of just eight people in the US receiving marijuana from the government because of unusual diseases. Daniel Zingale of Aids Action said he was: "Pleased the study validates the benefits of medicinal marijuana." Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project said the report shot down claims marijuana had no medical benefits. - --- MAP posted-by: Rich O'Grady