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Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV) Copyright: Las Vegas Review-Journal, 2000 Contact: letters@lvrj.com Address: P.O. Box 70, Las Vegas, NV 89125 Fax: (702)383-4676 Website: http://www.lvrj.com/ Forum: http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/feedback/ Author: Cy Ryan, Sun Capital Bureau | |||
| MEDICAL PANEL URGES MARIJUANA RESEARCH | |||
CARSON CITY -- A team of doctors and pharmacists has recommended that the state conduct research to determine if marijuana is effective in treating ailments such as cancer, AIDS or glaucoma. The group said the research program would allow the state to avoid a confrontation with the federal government, whose anti-marijuana laws conflict with the recently passed initiative that allows marijuana prescriptions. The panelists said it would help resolve the debate on whether the drug actually works. The recommendations are contained in the final report released Tuesday by the Nevada Medical Marijuana Initiative Work Group, formed last year after Nevada voters in 1998 passed a ballot initiative to allow medical use of marijuana. The initiative passed a second time in November and now becomes part of the Nevada Constitution. The work group issued its recommendations as guidelines to Gov. Kenny Guinn and the state Legislature, which will also be considering bills to reduce the penalty for possession of a small amount of marijuana from a felony to either a gross misdemeanor or misdemeanor. The group recommended formation of a committee of health care professionals. Doctors or medical groups could apply to the committee for permission to study the efficacy of marijuana. If the committee sanctions the plan, the research proposal would have to get federal approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Drug Abuse. Louis Ling, general counsel to the state Pharmacy Board and a co-author of the report, cited precedents for such state-federal cooperation. A plan similar to the Nevada patient research plan is already in use at the University of California, San Francisco, which secured federal approval, he said. And San Mateo County in California is close to final approval from the federal government. The state ad hoc committee would seek and distribute grants and possibly state money to help applicants through the process with the federal government and into the research stage. "Marijuana would be purchased by the research study through federally approved providers," the report says. "Marijuana would not be grown, processed or manufactured in Nevada. The federally approved provider would provide uniform, predictable and uncontaminated marijuana, thus protecting patients from the vagaries of illegal or homegrown marijuana." The physician conducting the research would write the prescription and it would be filled by participating pharmacies that would purchase marijuana from the federal government. This plan, said the work group, "would allow physicians, not state bureaucrats, to decide which patients would have access to marijuana for medical purposes." This system, the group said, treats marijuana as "a potential medicine. "Modern medicine has been and continues to be enriched by medications that originated from pre-existing biological materials," the report says. But these materials, it said, must be "subjected to rigorous and exacting medical and scientific research. Only through such rigor could folk remedies and traditional cures be proven or disproven and outright charlatanry be weeded out." If the claims are proven, then the research enhances "the lives of patients every day," the report said. The team said it was aware that the system "may restrict the access of some people to marijuana, since marijuana will only be available through approved medical research programs." Proponents of the constitutional amendment objected, the report notes, and there was "considerable frank debate" on that issue. But the group "determined that access to all experimental drugs is, by necessity, limited." "Such limited access is useful to produce credible results and to protect patients from the potential harm that an untried substance might produce. "Several members of the work group hoped that marijuana might provide medical tools presently unavailable, but they believed that only credible scientific research could validate marijuana's utility and safety," the report says. The law proposed by the group would not authorize the use or possession of the plant for purposes other than medical research. And it would not require insurance companies to cover the medical research. Nor would it require "accommodation of medical use in a place of employment." The group said, however, that marijuana available as part of an approved research program may be provided free to patients. And insurance companies could, if they wanted, reimburse for the use of the drug. The group mentioned problems with the distribution plan in California, which is "entangled in litigation" as the federal government fights the process. The U.S. Supreme Court is reviewing whether buyers clubs, at which people with a doctor's prescription can purchase the drug, are legal. The system in California will never answer the question of whether marijuana is beneficial, the Nevada panel said. It said there won't be any research on whether marijuana is safe when used as a medicine; on potential dangers to patients who use the drug as a medicine; and on its effectiveness in treating a specific disease or condition. "Marijuana will remain stigmatized as an illicit drug as long as it has no proven medical use," the report says. "Conversely, marijuana cannot be kept in Schedule I as soon as it is scientifically proven to have medical use, because it could then be moved into Schedule II." Controlled substances with a high potential for abuse are placed in Schedule I. Schedule II relaxes many of those restrictions. Those on the work group were Drs. Dipak Desai, Joel Lubritz and Cheryl A. Hug-English of the state Board of Medical Examiners; Drs. Scott Harris, Rudy Manthei and Saul Schreiber of the Board of Osteopathic Examiners and Joe Kellogg and Larry Pinson of the state Board of Pharmacy. Others members were Dan Hart of Nevadans for Medical Rights, which promoted the ballot initiative, and Dr. Trudy Larson, a professor at the University of Nevada School of Medicine. State Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, chairman of the Senate Human Resources and Facilities Committee, said his group would consider the recommendations. He has not seen the report yet and did not want to comment. "I'll wait and see the 'White Paper.' But this seems like the use is restricted," he said. | |||
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