Medical Suffering Is the Issue

It's time for Congress and the Food and Drug Administration to reconsider the use of marijuana for medical purposes, under the same careful restrictions that apply to prescribing other risky and often addictive substances.

This week voters in Nevada enacted a constitutional amendment approving medical marijuana, pending a second vote in two years. In Washington, voters endorsed a measure to restrictively legalize medical marijuana, while in Arizona voters reaffirmed their 1996 approval of medical marijuana. The electorates in Alaska and Oregon also endorsed medical marijuana. Two years ago California voters approved a medical marijuana initiative, one this newspaper opposed because it was too loosely drawn but which did aim to address the genuine needs of patients whose diseases or treatments produce pain and nausea. Federal intervention stopped the California initiative from being implemented, but public support for this form of therapy is plainly growing.

We recognize there is no medical consensus about marijuana's therapeutic value and that strong social concerns remain about legitimization of its use. But as the New England Journal of Medicine noted last year, there is clear evidence that for many seriously ill patients, marijuana can provide "striking relief" from nausea, vomiting, pain and other "devastating symptoms." In the light of this the federal government's continued classification of marijuana as a drug with no clinical value is both anachronistic and inhumane.

Morphine is a dangerous drug. But under proper controls, it has been of inestimable help in easing suffering. If properly funded and carefully controlled studies show that marijuana also has medical benefit for some patients, federal law should respond by making it legal for prescribed medical use--a far more restricted situation than what California voters supported two years ago.