LEADING MEDICAL JOURNAL ENDORSES PHYSICIAN-PRESCRIBED MARIJUANA.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

The New England Journal of Medicine has come out in favor of allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for medical purposes, calling the threat of government sanctions ``misguided, heavy-handed and inhumane.''

``Fantastic!'' exclaimed Scott Imler, founder of the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers Club. ``They hit the nail right on the head.''

Across California, where voters passed a proposition allowing doctors to recommend pot to certain patients, the journal's article has heightened debate among doctors and patients alike.

Imler said the editorial should help convince nervous doctors to ignore threats that they could lose their license by recommending pot to patients.

``Frankly, of late they have been a little too timid for my taste,'' said Imler.

Rex Greene, a Pasadena cancer doctor, said he agrees with the editorial, that the federal government has been unreasonably intrusive. But Greene said the pill form of the therapeutic component of marijuana has been sufficient for his patients.

``Smoke is injurious to the lungs. That is not an ideal delivery system for medication,'' said Greene, a trustee of the California Medical Association.

The president of the Los Angeles County Medical Association, Dr. Brian Johnston, said he believes the editorial has circumvented necessary scientific knowledge about the value of marijuana.

``I think (the editorial) goes beyond where it needs to go. I think we should get good scientific data, if we want physicians to deal with the problem,'' he said.

What Greene and Johnston agreed on is that the federal government has overstepped its bounds by threatening doctors.

After voters in Arizona and California passed propositions letting doctors prescribe pot for medical use, U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno said doctors who do this could lose their prescription-writing privileges, be excluded from Medicare and Medicaid programs, and even be prosecuted.

``Whatever their reasons, federal officials are out of step with the public,'' Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, the journal's editor, wrote in an editorial in today's issue. The journal is one of the world's most prestigious medical publications.

Some doctors believe marijuana can relieve internal eye pressure in glaucoma, control nausea in cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy and combat the severe weight loss seen in acquired immune deficiency syndrome patients. However, federal administration officials note that such uses of marijuana have not been proved.

Kassirer said marijuana is safer than some drugs used legally for some of the same conditions, such as morphine.

Furthermore, he said experiments to prove marijuana's value would be hard to do because of the difficulty of measuring nausea and other such sensations.

``What really counts for a therapy with this kind of safety margin is whether a seriously ill patient feels relief as a result of the intervention, not whether a controlled trial `proves' its efficacy,'' Kassirer wrote.

In a written response, retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, director of the Office of National Drug Policy, said marijuana might someday be approved for specific medical purposes.

``But up to this point, smoke is not a medicine,'' McCaffrey said.