MEDICAL MARIJUANA: ADMINISTRATION MAY SOFTEN STANCE
The White House "appears to be backing away from its threatsThis is part of the California Healthline Daily Edition, a summary of health policy coverage from major news organizations. Sign up for an email subscription.
to punish doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients under
a new state law in California," WASHINGTON TIMES reports. Steve
Heilig, spokesperson for the San Francisco Medical Society, said
that White House Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey said the federal
government "will not go after physicians who might recommend
(marijuana use) ... if it's not being done indiscriminately."
TIMES reports that McCaffrey's statement may be a response to a
lawsuit filed against the federal government that contends "a
crackdown would prevent doctors from practicing medicine and
violate doctors' and patients' free speech rights." The suit,
filed by Bay Area Physicians for Human Rights, the American Civil
Liberties Union and Being Alive, said, "Physicians have a
constitutional right to communicate to their patients a full
range of medical information and a duty to discuss fully the
range of treatment options for their patients" (Price, 2/18).
NEW WATERS: SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER reports, however, that
"[i]n what appears to be the first major strike in the federal
government's war on California's new medicinal marijuana law,
narcotics agents have grilled a doctor for recommending the drug
and launched an investigation into his practice." Drug
Enforcement Administration agents questioned a Pollack Pines, CA-
based physician who allegedly recommended marijuana use to three
patients since the state's marijuana law passed in November. The
doctor, Robert Mastroianni, said in an affidavit that the agents
"clearly meant to intimidate me and dissuade me from treating
certain of my seriously ill patients in accordance with my
medical experience and professional judgment. I am now reticent
and reluctant to recommend the use of medical marijuana even if
it is my ethical duty to do so." Dr. Virginia Cafaro, an HIV
specialist and member of Bay Area Physicians, said, "[T]his has
far-reaching implication[s] beyond just that of medicine. Big
Brother in Washington is now in your office" (Krieger, 2/16).
SPEAKING OUT: Joseph Califano Jr., former secretary of
health, education and welfare and present president of the
National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia
University, warned in a WASHINGTON POST op-ed that the supposed
benefits of marijuana be studied carefully. In the piece, he
compared marijuana to laetrile, a proposed cancer cure in the
1970s that won wide public support but was eventually proven to
be ineffective. "But with marijuana now as with laetrile then,
it is worth counting to 10. Let the NIH and FDA run smoked
marijuana through the tests that have for the most part avoided
tragedies here that have beset other nations (such as Britain
with thalidomide babies) that moved too fast to release untested
drugs" (2/17).