Case For Medical Marijuana Getting Stronger

Posting Date: 03/22/1999

The consensus for medical marijuana is strong and getting stronger.

In the New York Times editorial page, I found an first-person article attesting to medical marijuana?s benefits by an unlikely proponent, conservative writer Richard Brookhiser, who used the drug to combat nausea.

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Brookhiser, a senior editor of the National Review, says medical marijuana was the only drug that worked when he was fighting testicular cancer in 1992. He says doctors at several leading institutions knew he was using marijuana and didn?t discourage him.

His doctors, however, couldn?t prescribe marijuana since it was illegal. So, Brookhiser had to buy it off the streets in New York. The chemotherapy was successful, he notes, and he hasn?t smoked marijuana since.

Brookhiser and I both agree that alternative delivery systems should be tested for medical marijuana so people wouldn?t have to smoke it, which is the most harmful aspect of using it.

The problem is the federal government?s policy on medical marijuana also prohibits it from funding research that would come up with alternative methods of delivery, such as inhalers or patches.

There is an interesting research project at the University of Mississippi that has crossed my desk. It is a report on how the active ingredient in marijuana ? THC ? has been isolated and put into a suppository.

Alice Clark, M.D., with the university?s National Center for the Development of Natural Products, says the suppository is designed to relieve nausea in cancer patients who undergo chemotherapy treatment.

With a suppository, the patient receives a steady flow of the active ingredient of marijuana for therapeutic purposes while avoiding some side effects associated with smoking it, says Clark.

So, there is a groundswell of opinion in favor of medical marijuana since a federal panel last week found it to be beneficial in treating some ailments.