Ill-Conceived Marijuana ‘Reform’

Nobody’s joking about Proposition 215, despite the laughs it got when state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren got into a flap with Zonker, the eternal hippie of the “Doonesbury” comic strip. “Permissive,” Lungren said of Zonker’s attitude toward San Francisco’s Cannibis Buyers Club, which provided marijuana to terminal ill people. And to others without health problems, California’s No. 1 crime fighter said.

Proposition 215, an initiative on the November ballot, would allow marijuana to be used for medical purposes. There have long been widespread assertions that marijuana’s effects can stave off nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy. Many cancer specialists agree: In a 1990 survey, 44% of the American oncologists polled said they had recommended marijuana for patients having bad reactions from chemotherapy.

But while supporters of Proposition 215 insist that its “meaning and intent” is simply to allow seriously and terminally ill patients to use marijuana, the measure would in fact do far more than that. It would allow physicians to prescribe marijuana not only for life-threatening illnesses like cancer but for “arthritis, migraine, or any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.” That phrase is a major, fatal flaw.

For some seriously ill patients, marijuana may well offer relief. Early studies suggest that it can be more effective than Marinol, a legal marijuana substitute that contains only one of the plant’s estimated 400 chemicals.

But marijuana is not a harmless drug: Medical researchers and organizations like the American Cancer Society agree that smoking it can cause memory impairment and seriously damage lung tissue. Proposition 215 could have encouraged responsible medical practice by requiring physicians to establish that no existing medications could treat a given problem before they resorted to prescribing marijuana. Moreover, the framers of 215 could have written it to petition the Federal Drug Administration to move marijuana from its current place on Schedule I, a category reserved for illegal and highly dangerous drugs that “lack an accepted medical use,” to Schedule II, a category for dangerous drugs like opium and cocaine that physicians can prescribe under the supervision of state medical boards. Proposition 215 does not do that and does not ensure safe medical care. It should be rejected at the polls.