ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 31, 1996 TAG: 9612310099
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Clinton administration warned doctors Monday that new state laws allowing medical uses of marijuana in Arizona and California don't matter: The drug is still illegal to prescribe under federal law.
``We will not turn a blind eye toward our responsibility,'' Attorney General Janet Reno said in promising to go after doctors who prescribe smoking marijuana, especially in cases where abuse is suspected.
Physicians who counsel patients to use marijuana could be excluded from the Medicare and Medicaid programs and lose the right to prescribe drugs. Doctors also could face criminal charges, but Reno said federal prosecutors will decide such charges on a case-by-case basis, taking into account whether a true doctor-patient relationship exists - or whether unscrupulous physicians are simply out to sell pot for profit.
Voters in California and Arizona eased restrictions on marijuana's use in November, even as Clinton was trying to step up the war on drugs amid reports of increased marijuana use among teen-agers.
Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who leads Clinton's anti-drug campaign, called the ballot measures ``hoax initiatives'' during a news conference with Reno and Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
``These propositions are not about compassion; they are about legalizing dangerous drugs,'' said McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.
But Dr. Jeffrey Singer, a Phoenix surgeon who was active in the movement to ease the strictures, said he was outraged by what he called the Clinton administration's ``threats'' to physicians.
Singer said Arizona's law was crafted so it wouldn't contradict the federal law. It merely says that a person arrested for possession should be released if he has a doctor's prescription, Singer said.
``If they're going to take away a doctor's license because he rendered his opinion on paper, that's a First Amendment issue,'' Singer said.
Act Up, an AIDS patient activist group, also protested.
``The president has declared war on people with AIDS and their doctors,'' said spokesman Steve Michael. ``There is a drug war, but it needs to be fought in areas other than the doctor-patient relationship.''
In California, Republican Attorney General Dan Lungren praised the Clinton administration for taking what he called a ``tough and reasonable'' stance.
``They tried to add some clarity where fog had existed,'' he said.
Some research has suggested marijuana is useful in relieving internal eye pressure in glaucoma; for controlling nausea in cancer patients on chemotherapy; and for combating wasting, a severe weight loss associated with AIDS.
However, several groups of experts say there is no proven medical use for smoked marijuana. And better drugs exist to treat nausea, glaucoma and HIV-related wasting, said Dr. John Glaspy, medical director of the oncology center at University of California, Los Angeles.
``I don't see any value in it at all,'' Glaspy said.
Glaspy sometimes prescribes a legal drug that contains the active ingredient in marijuana, called THC, but only ``once or twice a year.''
``We have so much better nausea medicines now,'' he said.
Shalala, whose agency oversees the National Institutes of Health, contended ``all available research has concluded that marijuana is dangerous to our health. Marijuana harms the brain, heart, lungs and immune system.''
NIH has investigated claims about the possible benefit of smoked marijuana for a small number of symptoms, and will continue to do so, she said. But any government research must undergo rigorous peer review.
The country's main physicians' group, the American Medical Association, urged ``federal funding of research to determine the validity of marijuana as an effective medical treatment.''
Meanwhile, AMA President Daniel Johnson Jr. urged doctors ``to prescribe effective, legal medications available to compassionately treat disease and relieve pain.''
To prescribe drugs, a physician must be registered with the Drug Enforcement Administration. If the registration is revoked, the doctor no longer would be able to write prescriptions, said DEA spokeswoman Diane Martin.
No doctor is licensed to prescribe ``Schedule 1'' drugs, which include heroin, marijuana, LSD and methaqualone.
In Phoenix, cancer specialist Dr. Spence Thompson said legal concerns - even after passage of the state law - keep him from prescribing marijuana.
``Until there was a mandate, I thought it prudent not to go run out writing prescriptions for something I knew was against federal law,'' Thompson said. ``But I welcome the opportunity to use marijuana you're talking about a small number of patients. But the fact is that if it works for some people, it works.''
LENGTH: Medium: 89 linesby CNB