Original publication: February 1994.
THE BATTLE FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA
PETER GORMAN
Medical marijuana is legally available to only nine people nationwide. The Compassionate Investigational New Drug (IND) program which supplies government marijuana to those nine is jointly administered by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) and the Public Health Service (PHS)—which shut down expansion of the program two years ago, claiming that it sent a “bad signal” to the American public. But with the arrival of the Clinton team in Washington, more tolerant winds may be blowing through the corridors of power. Following an order from Secretary of Health Donna Shalala to review the Compassionate IND, rumors have been dying that the program will be opened to new applicants any day.
PHS spokesman Bill Grigg confirmed that meetings regarding the program have occurred—but said they concerned “how to proceed to look at the issue, rather than on whether and when to reopen the program.”
If the Administration does decide to reopen the program, it faces a road riddled with political and bureaucratic land mines. Keeping it shut is similarly unacceptable: people are going blind from glaucoma and suffering needlessly from the “wasting syndrome” associated with AIDS, muscular disorders, and side effects from cancer chemotherapy. Which way will the Administration turn? Difficult to say. But the story of the creation and closure of the Compassionate IND program must be looked at to grasp what is at stake.
In September 1972, Robert Randall, an aspiring speech writer from Washington, was diagnosed with glaucoma—a degenerative eye disease and the leading cause of blindness in the US—and placed on the standard medical treatment. Unfortunately, he developed tolerances to drug therapy and his sight, which already suffered from massive damage to both eyes, continued …
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Author: High Times Vault / High Times
