The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is convening a two-day conference next week to assess existing scientific research regarding marijuana’s therapeutic potential. The conference was announced following public criticism from some members of the medical establishment over the Administration’s refusal to allow physicians to prescribe marijuana for seriously ill patients in accordance with recently passed state initiatives in Arizona and California. The conference will take place on February 19 and 20.
National Institute of Health officials claim that the conference will remain solely scientific in nature, and Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey has publicly stated that he does not expect to attend the conference. However, many medical marijuana proponents remain doubtful that the conference will remain devoid of politics.
“It seems ironic that the same federal agency that has twice denied the marijuana necessary to conduct an FDA-approved protocol by San Francisco researcher Dr. Donald Abrams on the effects of marijuana and the AIDS wasting syndrome, and has stonewalled proposed state-sponsored medical marijuana studies by both Washington State University and the Massachusetts Department of Health will be an objective moderator for this scientific review,” said NORML’s Deputy Director Allen St. Pierre. He announced that NORML, in conjunction with other Washington D.C.-based drug-law reform organizations, will be holding a press conference on Wednesday, February 19, where doctors and patients will speak in favor of marijuana’s medical value. Dr. John Morgan of City University of New York Medical School, NORML Board Member Lynn Zimmer, Ph.D., of Queens College, and former medical marijuana user Richard Brookhiser — Senior Editor of National Review — are expected to speak the press conference, along with various medical marijuana patients.
Medical marijuana proponents will present NIDA officials with a compendium of over 75 scientific studies demonstrating marijuana’s medical effectiveness in the treatment of glaucoma, spasticity disorders, the nausea associated with cancer chemotherapy, and other serious illnesses. Included in the compendium are the results of several state-sponsored clinical trials involving hundreds of patients. For example, a 1983 report evaluating the effects of marijuana as an anti-emetic in cancer patients released by Tennessee Board of Pharmacy concluded: “We found both marijuana smoking and THC capsules to be effective anti-emetics. We found an approximate 23 percent higher success rate among those patients smoking than among those patients administered THC capsules.” [Emphasis added. –ed.]
“Contrary to popular belief, there have been hundreds of studies on the medical uses of cannabis since its introduction to western medicine in the mid-nineteenth century,” said NORML’s Publications Director Paul Armentano who attended NIDA’s 1995 National Conference on Marijuana Use: Prevention, Treatment, and Research. He noted that the subject of medical marijuana was effectively “swept under the rug” during that forum. “NIDA had the opportunity to address this pressing issue in 1995, but opted to all but ignore the issue, allotting less than one half-hour for its discussion,” Armentano explained.
“The literature [in support of medical marijuana] has been there a long time,” Dr. Laurens White, a cancer specialist in San Francisco, told the New York Times. “There is enough anecdotal evidence and papers to say that medically, there isn’t any evidence of harm and that there is evidence of benefit.”
For more information, please call Allen St. Pierre of NORML at (202) 483-5500 or Dave Fratello of Americans for Medical Rights at (202) 537-5005. Copies of NORML‘s position paper: Making The Case For Medical Marijuana, are available upon request or on-line at NORML‘s website at: http://www.norml.org.