48% of Cancer Specialists in Study Would Prescribe Pot : Health: The survey comes as federal drug enforcers, at the urging of a court of appeals, reconsider their absolute ban on marijuana.

Despite the drug’s illegality, more than 40% of surveyed U.S. cancer specialists have recommended smoking marijuana to relieve chemotherapy nausea, and 48% say they would prescribe it in some cases if it were made legal, a new study reported Tuesday.

The survey, which comes as federal drug enforcers are reconsidering their absolute ban on the drug, indicates a greater level of acceptance of marijuana’s medicinal value by physicians than previously indicated.

The findings by Mark Kleiman, a lecturer in public policy, and Rick Doblin, a graduate student at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, are summarized in a letter to the Annals of Internal Medicine.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals here last Friday ordered the Drug Enforcement Administration to reconsider its criteria for determining that marijuana has “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” Under that determination, DEA has continued to classify marijuana as a Schedule I drug--the category of controlled substances carrying the most severe restrictions on access by doctors and patients.

“Even though the U.S. Court of Appeals rejected DEA’s criteria for determining ‘currently accepted medical use,’ the court seemed to accept DEA’s claim that ‘the vast majority of physicians do not accept marijuana as having a medical use,’ ” Doblin said.

While the survey “may not exactly reflect the views of the entire population of U.S. oncologists, it nevertheless indicates that DEA significantly underestimated the extent of physician acceptance of the medical use of marijuana,” he said. “At the least, a very substantial minority of all U.S. oncologists find the medical use of marijuana to be both safe and efficacious and would prescribe it to some of their patients if they were free to do so.”

Bush Administration drug experts disagreed that the survey’s results called into question the DEA’s stand, citing the small rate of response and other factors.

In the survey, conducted a year ago, the Kennedy school researchers sent a questionnaire to one-third of the U.S.-based members of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The 2,430 participants were selected at random.

About 43% of the recipients responded to the anonymous survey, a rate that Kleiman said raised the possibility of “response bias.” For example, physicians who recommended marijuana for patients might have been more willing to participate than those who had not.

Some 44% of the respondents said they had recommended using marijuana for controlling nausea to at least one cancer patient undergoing chemotherapy. In addition, 48% said they would prescribe it if it were legal, 22% said they would not, and 30% said they would need more information before deciding whether to do so.

Of those with opinions on whether marijuana should be made available by prescription, 54% supported the change, and 46% were opposed.

Dr. Herbert D. Kleber, deputy director for demand reduction in the Office of National Drug Control Policy, said he saw “no consensus” in the survey that marijuana in smokable form should be more freely available for medical use.

Kleber said marijuana already is available to relieve nausea from cancer treatments under Food and Drug Administration provisions for “compassionate use,” and that no applications had been denied.

An FDA spokesman said more than two dozen cases had been approved by the agency for patients with cancer, AIDS, glaucoma, neurological problems and some rare disorders. A physician’s application must be approved also by the DEA and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the spokesman said.

Staff writer Marlene Cimons contributed to this story.