Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine.

Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine, by Lester Grinspoon and B. James Bakalar (Yale, 184 pp., $25)

AFTER one hundred pages of anecdotal evidence exhaustively detailing the medical potential of marijuana, Dr. Grinspoon and Mr. Bakalar thought to dash off two pages defending "anecdotal evidence." Had they resisted this impulse -- perhaps a last-minute suggestion from their editor? -- their book would have been even more powerful. The stories of relief are well documented and tremendously empathetic -- just the sort of thing that can convince a person who has reflexively condemned the medicinal use of marijuana that he is grievously in error. Whether or not marijuana should be as legal as whisky, this book makes it demonstrably clear that it should be as legal as Valium. The brief history of marijuana in the first chapter and the justification for full legalization in the last I could have done without. But for those who would deny medicinal marijuana to terminal cancer patients (though it can lift the burden of wrenching nausea) and glaucoma victims (though it can prevent the plunge into darkness), Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine ought to be required reading.