Marijuana, AIDS
researcher seeks
isle applicants

He praises Cayetano for
backing a bill to allow
medical marijuana

By Mary Adamski
Star-Bulletin

The doctor who is beginning the first U.S. study of the effects of marijuana on AIDS patients said San Francisco doctors treating HIV-positive victims "know so many of our patients smoke, we need to know if it's helpful or harmful."

Dr. Donald Abrams' planned research project will focus on the safety of medical marijuana use. He described it Thursday to a group of 35 Honolulu physicians who treat AIDS victims, and yesterday at the Honolulu Medical Group.

"AIDS patients in San Francisco have long told us that marijuana is good medicine," said Abrams, assistant director of the San Francisco General Hospital AIDS program and a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California in San Francisco. He was involved in early research into the effects of AIDS and treatments.

He praised Gov. Ben Cayetano, who has said he will back a bill to permit marijuana use under a doctor's supervision. "Perhaps Hawaii can pass rational legislation that the rest of the country can follow."

Voters in six other states have approved ballot initiatives legalizing medical marijuana use. But implementation has been thwarted -- by Arizona's Legislature, by Colorado's state administration and, in California, by state and federal enforcement agencies, which shut down dispensaries permitted by local San Francisco authorities.

A total of 64 subjects are being sought for the research project, which will seek information on marijuana in combination with virus-suppressing medication taken by AIDS patients. It also will look at marijuana's effect on appetite, energy, weight and body composition.

Hawaii applicants would be welcome, he said. A subject must be an AIDS patient who is taking protease inhibitors and has previously used marijuana "so they know what to expect." Interested persons should call (415) 502-5705.

The participants will be paid $1,000 to stay in the hospital for 25 days. Some will smoke three marijuana cigarettes per day; others will take a pill containing synthetic THC, marijuana's primary active ingredient; and others will take a placebo.

"In a year we'll actually have some facts instead of anecdotes," said Dr. David McEwan of Honolulu, founder of the Life Foundation.

"People tell us what they hear from others. We really need to know if this works," said Dr. Brian Issell, director of the Cancer Research Center of Hawaii and a University of Hawaii professor of medicine. "Does it help and who does it help -- I really hope we can find out."

Abrams said the Food and Drug Administration approved his study in 1994, the year he proposed it, but he was thwarted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which controls the legal supply of marijuana for research.

After reconfiguring the scope of the research project, he finally got a grant from the National Institutes of Health. "The government gave us $1 million and 1,400 joints," he said, in a humorous punch line to his chronicle of years of government roadblocks to the research.