`MURPHY BROWN' ANGERS DEA WITH EPISODE ON MARIJUANA USE.

Byline: Associated Press 

Fictional broadcaster Murphy Brown is in trouble again with a government official. The chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration accused the CBS television character Wednesday of sending a dangerous message to children by using marijuana to relieve nausea caused by chemotherapy.

In a statement issued a few hours before the broadcast of the situation comedy Wednesday, DEA Administrator Thomas Constantine said CBS and the show's creators were ``doing a great disservice,'' ``trivializing drug abuse'' and ``pandering to the libertarian supporters of an open society and to the myths of legalization.''

In the episode, actress Candice Bergen, who plays television reporter Brown, is shown smoking a marijuana cigarette to quell nausea from chemotherapy prescribed to treat her breast cancer. The illegal marijuana is purchased for her by another character who is concerned about her inability to get relief from legal drugs and therapies.

``As a law enforcement official with 38 years of experience and, even more importantly, as a father and grandfather, I am extremely troubled that at a time when teen-age drug abuse is doubling . . . a television show of the caliber of `Murphy Brown' would portray marijuana as medicine,'' Constantine said. ``It is not medicine. More dangerously, the show sends the message to our children that marijuana must be OK because it's medicine.''

CBS Vice President Chris Enders replied in an interview that network officials consider the episode responsible comedy. ``We stand firmly behind this episode, which deals with the medicinal use of marijuana in a compelling, poignant and sometimes humorous manner.''

Enders said the episode got a more restrictive rating than the show usually does - TV-14, meaning parents were strongly urged to exercise great care in monitoring the program and not to let children younger than 14 watch unattended.

In 1992, then-Vice President Dan Quayle touched off a national debate when he accused the show of undermining families with Murphy Brown's decision to have a child out of wedlock.

``I'm sorry if we've upset Mr. Constantine. Obviously he hasn't seen the show,'' said Mark Flanigan, ``Murphy Brown'' executive producer. ``We had no political agenda. We are not advocating the medical use of marijuana.''

Flanigan said physicians and cancer specialists told the writers that some patients do gain relief from nausea with marijuana when other drugs don't work, so they wrote marijuana into the script only after showing Brown unsuccessfully trying all other known treatments.