MARIJUANA BACKERS DON'T MAKE IT EASY

There are roughly 10,000 doctors practicing medicine in Colorado, yet not
one is riding into battle beside sponsors of the medical marijuana
initiative. Not one.

There were no doctors publicly allied with Coloradans for Medical Rights in
1998, when Amendment 20 initially made the ballot (and was illegally thrown
off by the secretary of state), and there were still no doctors on board
last week when I checked with the sponsors again.

What gives? You can find maverick doctors willing to put in a good word for
virtually any exotic nostrum on the market. We've seen them plugging
unorthodox diet books that ought to be plastered with consumer warning
labels. And yet when it comes to Amendment 20, the mavericks have fled the
scene. No one rises to contradict the medical establishment. No one steps
forward, links arms with the initiative's sponsors, and tells us why we
need to decriminalize marijuana for use by patients in pain.

If there were a groundswell of Coloradans demanding marijuana as the only
way to relieve their agony, wouldn't you think some doctors would rally to
their cause? It makes you wonder whose agenda this amendment is meant to
serve: doctors' and patients', or the wealthy supporters of drug
legalization who've bankrolled this and similar ballot measures across the
land.

Another worry: the amendment's definition of who would qualify to use
marijuana. No, not just those afflicted with AIDS, cancer or other
specific, devastating conditions, but anyone claiming to suffer from severe
and chronic pain.

Now, I'm someone who does believe that doctors and desperate patients
should be able to choose the pain and nausea treatment they like, however
outside mainstream medical practice. That's why deciding how to vote on
Amendment 20 will be such a challenge for me. There's no question that the
''cannabinoid drugs'' in marijuana (THC is the best known, but there are
others) can relieve pain, stimulate appetite and suppress nausea. And there
is also no question that at least a few patients insist that marijuana
gives them more effective, immediate relief than the legal synthetic
alternatives that work best for everyone else.

Even a 1999 study by the Institute for Medicine conducted at the request of
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy acknowledged that
''until a nonsmoked, rapid-onset cannabinoid drug delivery system becomes
available," there "is no clear alternative" to marijuana use in some instances.

To be sure, the researchers who conducted that study went to great pains to
stress ''the future of cannabinoid drugs lies not in smoked marijuana but
in chemically-defined drugs'' and that ''because of the health risk
associated with smoking, smoked marijuana should generally not be
recommended for long-term medical use.''

Yet under Amendment 20, a patient could smoke marijuana as a long-term
treatment through repeated renewals of a one-year registry card.

With broader professional support and a better crafted amendment,
Coloradans for Medical Rights could have made voting easy for those of us
who sympathize with the principle behind their cause. Instead, they chose
to make it hard.