Panel Calls For Study Of Medical Uses For Marijuana Experts Say Drug Shows Promise In Treating Certain Patients
A federal advisory panel, thrusting itself into the center of a standoff between federal drug authorities and advocates of marijuana use for medicinal purposes, said Thursday that the drug may have promising therapeutic results and called for clinical trials of its medical effectiveness.
Following a two-day workshop at the National Institutes of Health, members of the panel said they believed marijuana could have some value in treating nausea among cancer patients receiving chemotherapy, wasting syndrome among AIDS patients, and glaucoma.
“There are at least some indications that are promising enough for there to be some new controlled studies,” said panel chairman Dr. William T. Beaver, professor of pharmacology and anesthesia at Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington.
The call for research stopped well short of advocating that doctors be allowed to prescribe marijuana, but neither did the specialists dismiss anecdotal evidence indicating that the drug helped certain patients.
The advisory panel, made up of outside medical experts, shied away from discussing the politics of the issue, which escalated into a national debate after voters in California and Arizona approved initiatives allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes - and the Clinton administration responded by announcing it would go after any doctors who did.
“You can argue policy and politics all you want, but if you haven’t got the data, the political thing is irrelevant - because you cannot say this is an effective medication,” Beaver said.
California’s Proposition 215, approved by 56 percent of the voters, decriminalized possession of marijuana by patients and caregivers if the drug was recommended by a physician. Arizona’s Proposition 200 goes one step farther by allowing sick people to use stronger drugs, including heroin or LSD, if approved by two licensed physicians.
Federal drug officials responded with stern warnings that the propositions were in conflict with U.S. drug laws and that physicians who prescribed marijuana would be criminally prosecuted. But those authorities have suggested they do favor more research into marijuana.
Immediately after the panel’s announcement Thursday, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, immediately urged researchers to seek federal funding for marijuana studies.
Director Dr. Alan I. Leshner stressed the “openness and willingness” of the federal biomedical research agency to review such grant proposals and, if they are approved, to “provide the product,” in other words, the drug.