ON MARIJUANA, JUST THE FACTS

What is it that makes marijuana more frightening to the federal
government than cocaine or morphine? The Drug Enforcement
Administration has steadfastly, over decades, listed marijuana as a
Schedule I drug, meaning that it has no medical value and that the
potential for abuse is high. Cocaine and morphine, far more dangerous
and habit-forming, are listed as Schedule II because they have some
medical value.

Last week the DEA ruled once again, a decade after it made the same
decision, that marijuana is a potentially dangerous drug without
known medical benefits. During the intervening 10 years, though, nine
more states passed medical marijuana laws, bringing the total to 17.
Two years ago, the American Medical Assn. recommended changing the
classification of marijuana to Schedule II, which would make it
easier for researchers to obtain the drug for medical studies.

In March, the National Cancer Institute reported: "The potential
benefits of medicinal cannabis for people living with cancer include
antiemetic effects, appetite stimulation, pain relief and improved
sleep." However, it stopped short of endorsing marijuana as a medical
treatment, concluding that there was too little evidence.

The cancer institute and the DEA are right that there's not enough
scientific evidence about the medical uses of cannabis. But the
biggest reason there is so little proof, one way or the other, is
that the federal government is paranoid about legitimate research on
the drug and has refused to relist it as Schedule II. The few and
scattered studies that have been completed, in this country and
around the world, have not proved marijuana's potential benefits, but
by and large, they have produced some promising findings. In the late
1990s, both the New England Journal of Medicine and the Institute of
Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, suggested that
marijuana appeared to have some medical uses and recommended more research.

Those recommendations went unheeded, and no wonder. All
research-grade marijuana in this country is under the control of the
National Institute on Drug Abuse, whose mission is to research the
addictive properties of drugs, not their potential medical benefits.

Our prescription is for better knowledge. Oversight of research-grade
marijuana should be shared with an agency whose primary mission is
medical research. Marijuana should be listed as a Schedule II drug to
facilitate further research. The findings should be submitted to the
Food and Drug Administration, just as clinical trials are for any
other drug. Then the nation can base its marijuana policy on
information, not on entrenched fears or a patchwork of possibly
well-intentioned but under-informed state medical marijuana laws.