Pubdate: Wed, 26 May 1999 Source: Blade, The (OH) Copyright: 1999 The Blade. Contact: 541 North Superior St., Toledo, OH 43660 Website: http://www.toledoblade.com/ DECRIMINALIZING RESEARCH The federal government's decision to soften its stance on research into the medical use of marijuana is overdue. For too long the demonization of the drug, even to the extent of limiting scientific research, has delayed important studies of whether marijuana may ease the pain and symptoms associated with such ailments as cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma. This is not opening the door to the widespread cultivation of marijuana and the accompanying risk of lax controls allowing supplies to reach to street. Rather it will allow a government approved growing site at the University of Mississippi to increase its crop to provide sufficient marijuana for researchers. It has long been to the nation's shame that research has been limited into the possible palliative effects of the drug for some patients. That is particularly the case when some of those suffering from AIDS or glaucoma, for example, are forced to the illegal market for their supply. In their search for help in managing their ailments, these people have been transformed into criminals. That's unacceptable. The federal government is in part responding to voter sentiment supportive of such research. Medical use of marijuana already has been approved in at least six states, but because the drug is banned by federal law, some doctors have been understandably nervous about prescribing it. The new guidelines may ease those fears. Those guidelines will allow privately funded researchers to purchase pot from the government for use in studies sanctioned by the National Institutes of Health. Both an NIH panel and the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine have urged further scientific research into possible medical benefits of marijuana for some patients. Such research could lead to relief of the suffering of thousands of Americans. Seen from that perspective it is, as we have said, difficult to justify the time it has taken to reach this point. Allowing medical research was never going to initiate "reefer madness.'' Instead, the government's hard-nosed approach was seen as cruelly insensitive to the needs of those patients who might be helped by using the drug. Encouraging research cannot by any stretch of the imagination be viewed as an endorsement of the drugs' recreational use. Rather, it is recognition that marijuana may have medical benefits - and if so, they should be uncovered and made available to patients in need. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake