cannabisnews.com: AIDS Groups Issue First Call to Drug Czar! 





AIDS Groups Issue First Call to Drug Czar! 
Posted by FoM on February 16, 1999 at 16:14:33 PT
This is great news!
AIDS Groups Issue First Call for Drug Czar to Approve Medical Marijuana on Fast Track for People with AIDS! Physicians should be allowed to prescribe marijuana as an emergency measure to people with HIV/AIDS without further research, says a letter to be sent February 17th from the heads of seventeen AIDS organizations to General Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office for National Drug Control Policy. This is the first time that AIDS groups have come together to call for legal, immediate access to marijuana. 
Unprecedented Statement Comes as Institute of Medicine Prepares to Publish! Citing a fast-track system that has allowed physicians to prescribe protease inhibitors and other AIDS medications before the completion of clinical trials, the letter calls on McCaffrey to give immediate approval to what they say is another life-saving drug -- marijuana. "(W)e urge you to help break the bureaucratic logjam that is keeping a potentially life-saving medicine, marijuana, virtually inaccessible to thousands of people living with AIDS," says the letter, signed by AIDS Action Council, San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Latino Commission on AIDS, National Native American AIDS Prevention Center, AIDS National Interfaith Network, Mothers' Voices to End AIDS, AIDS Project Los Angeles, and other organizations around the country. Copies of the letter were also sent to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Office of National AIDS Policy and the U.S. House and Senate Majority and Minority leaders. The AIDS organizations are urging McCaffrey to make good on an October, 1997 statement to Congress, which said: "If sound medical research demonstrates that there are medical uses for smoked marijuana, there are appropriate and responsive procedures for rescheduling this mind-influencing drug through the time-tested process. "The FDA has already demonstrated flexibility in accelerating procedures for allowing the use of emerging AIDS-related drugs without jeopardizing science or the public health." Thousands of Americans with HIV/AIDS use marijuana to relieve the nausea caused by multiple-drug therapies, and to combat the "wasting syndrome" associated with the late, often fatal, stages of AIDS by stimulating appetite. But, with marijuana classed as a highly-controlled Schedule I substance under federal law, most patients use the medicine illegally, risking prosecution and exposure to contaminated products. Recent studies and editorials in prestigious scientific journals Lancet, New Scientist, New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association have concluded that marijuana's medical benefits outweigh its risks. Convinced by existing research, Britain and Israel recently sanctioned the compassionate use of marijuana on a provisional basis, and six U.S. states have passed ballot initiatives to legalize medical marijuana -- throwing state policies into conflict with federal law. In 1996, McCaffrey commissioned the Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a full review of the science surrounding medical marijuana. That study is expected to be released next month, and may lead to calls for new research into medical marijuana. Just one clinical trial has been approved by the federal government since 1985. AIDS organizations say terminally-ill patients cannot afford to wait for years of research to prove something they already know: medical marijuana works. "Science and compassion should dictate our nation's policy regarding medical treatment," says the letter. "However, politics has stood in the way of the approval of marijuana as a legal medication, and the full development of a science base leading to FDA approval could still be years away. "Under these circumstances, making marijuana immediately available on a quasi-experimental basis to people living with AIDS [...], is a moderate step that can add to the federal government's responsiveness to the epidemic." 
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