Marijuana: A Horticultural Revolution, A Medical and Legal Battle
	

      For years there has been a wonder drug which has befriended countless sick patients
in a number of countries.  A relatively inexpensive drug that is not covered by health care
plans which has aided the ill both mentally and physically--marijuana.  Significant
scientific and medical studies have demonstrated that marijuana is safe for use under
medical supervision and that the cannabis plant, in its natural form, has important
therapeutic benefits that are often of critical medical importance to persons afflicted with
a variety of life-threatening illnesses. Courts have recognized marijuana's medical value
in treatment and have ruled that marijuana can be a drug of "necessity" in the treatment
of glaucoma, cancer, AIDS, and multiple sclerosis.  From the collection of information
we now have on marijuana's health benefits for the ill, there is no longer any reason to
keep it illegal.  It should therefore be legal for licensed physicians to prescribe marijuana
for terminal patients for whom it offers the only reasonable opportunity for living without
unbearable pain. 
     Marijuana has been used many times to help ease pain and suffering.  It often eases
nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy,  reduces the pain of AIDS patients
and lowers eye pressure in glaucoma sufferers.  Cancer and AIDS patients often lose a lot
of weight, either due directly to their illness or indirectly to the treatment of the illness. 
Dramatic weight loss puts their lives in even more danger.   Marijuana stimulates the
appetite, thus enabling patients to eat more and gain weight which in turn strengthens the
immune system. 
     So if there are so many benefits, then why is marijuana not legal?  Many states
contend that the ban on medical marijuana is necessary to prevent drug abuse and the
availability of illicit drugs and to control the purity of medicinal drug products.  These
states have no compelling interest in intervening to needlessly prolong terminal patients'
suffering.  States should allow the medical use of marijuana under strict regulations,
rather than uphold an outdated drug classification scheme.  
     While federal agencies adamantly maintain marijuana has "no accepted medical use
in treatment in the United States," the medical prohibition has come under strong legal
challenge from seriously ill Americans who have been arrested on marijuana-related
charges.   In U.S. v. Randall, a Washington, D.C. man afflicted by glaucoma employed
the little-used Common Law doctrine of necessity to defend himself against criminal
charges of marijuana cultivation.  On November 24, 1976, federal Judge James
Washington ruled Randall's use of marijuana constituted a "medical necessity."  In part,
Judge Washington ruled: 
		
		While blindness was shown by competent medical testimony 
		to be the otherwise inevitable result of defendant's disease, no 
		adverse effects from the smoking of marijuana have been demon-
		strated.  Medical evidence suggests that the medical prohibition
		is not well-founded.
If a judge can determine when a "medical necessity" is warranted and can rule that a sick
individual should be granted the legal use of marijuana, then should a licensed physician
not be just as capable of doing so, if not...much more capable?  Well trained medical
professionals rather than inapt federal bureaucrats should be responsible for determining
a patient's medical care routine.  
     This is an intolerable, untenable legal situation. Unless legislators and regulators
attend to these urgent human needs and rapidly move to correct the anomaly arising from
the absolute prohibition of marijuana which forces law abiding citizens into the streets - -
and criminality - to meet their legitimate medical needs, cases of the type of  U.S. v.
Randall will continue to be prevalent and will increase considerably.  There is a pressing
need for a more compassionate, humane law which clearly discriminates between the
criminal conduct of those who socially abuse chemicals and the legitimate medical needs
of seriously ill patients whose welfare and very lives may depend on the prudent
therapeutic use of those very same substances.