Wanted: Rationality About ‘Pot’

When Californians passed Proposition 215 six months ago, federal drug officials understandably complained that the state was legalizing something--the medical use of marijuana--over which only Washington had jurisdiction. Then the government took a series of overly zealous steps that exacerbated state-federal tensions.

In January, federal drug czar Barry McCaffrey declared that doctors who recommend the medical use of marijuana could face federal prosecution and the revocation of their right to prescribe federally monitored drugs. That threat smacked of the “gag rules” against doctors that the government so deplores in managed care contracts. Three months later, federal Drug Enforcement Agency agents staged their first raid on one of California’s medical marijuana buyers’ clubs since Proposition 215’s passage.

U.S. District Judge Fern Smith struck a blow for good sense a couple of weeks ago, issuing an order that both blocks federal retaliation against physicians and tightens the circumstances for recommending marijuana. Rather than sanctioning Proposition 215’s original, sloppy wording--which allows physicians and other medical providers to recommend marijuana for nearly whatever they please--Smith ruled that her court’s protection applied only to four serious medical conditions: AIDS or HIV infection, cancer, glaucoma and seizures or muscle spasms associated with certain debilitating conditions.

Smith’s ruling is only a temporary solution, for the DEA still regards marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, in a class with heroin, meaning it’s an illegal substance lacking any medical value. A permanent solution would be for the federal government to reclassify marijuana under Schedule 2, a carefully monitored category of risky and often addictive substances like morphine that have some medical utility and can be legally prescribed by doctors.

This has recently been urged by arbiters of mainstream medical opinion like the New England Journal of Medicine and might forestall other states that are considering their own marijuana propositions. To put more light and less heat on the subject, the Clinton administration should also support careful studies of which chemicals in marijuana ease or exacerbate which disorders and why.

Guidelines from the National Institutes of Health on promising directions for such research are expected later this month. Congress and the administration should ensure that marijuana studies go briskly forward.