By Matt Simonette

Staff writer

If a bill that passed out of the state Senate Public House Committee last week were to become law, Illinois would become the 13th state, and the first in the Midwest, to allow marijuana to be used for medicinal purposes.

Though its possession and distribution is outlawed by the federal government and most states, marijuana has long been used to treat symptoms of numerous medical conditions, including HIV/AIDS.

A study released in February 2007 said that HIV patients suffering from peripheral neuropathy, a painful nerve condition in their hands and feet, obtained relief after smoking small amounts of cannabis.

The study, financed by the state of California and carried out at San Francisco General Hospital, was the first of its kind to measure the therapeutic effects of marijuana. Persons with HIV/AIDS have also used the plant as an appetite stimulant to counter “wasting,” the loss of body mass and size that sometimes accompanies AIDS-related illnesses.

Bruce Mirken, communications director of the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, said last year’s findings were significant because cannabis produced measurable positive results “even using government-supplied marijuana, which is garbage.”

“For a long time, the feds wouldn’t let any research get done,” Mirken said. “A friend of mine called the whole research process ‘an endless labyrinth of closed doors.’”

The American College of Physicians, the second largest physicians’ organization in the country, released a position paper in January of this year calling for legal protection for medical marijuana users, reconsideration of it as a “Schedule I” drug and expanded research.

The federal government, which has long maintained that there is no medical benefit from cannabis, is consistently the “biggest source of misinformation about marijuana,” according to Mirken. He reserves harsh words for U.S. Drug Czar John Walters, who he calls “an absolute fanatic who’s not above lying through his teeth.”

Mirken said it’s unclear how many people in the country are currently using marijuana for medical purposes. California, which is believed to have the most medical marijuana users, does not have a registry tracking who is using it, for example. “The best estimates are probably 150,000-250,000 people nationwide,” Mirken said.

But the government is reluctant to give up enforcing marijuana enforcement policy, according to Mirken, because drug enforcement is a huge industry supporting everyone from weapons manufacturers to prison food concessionaires. The exact cost of the “war on drugs” is not known, since most of it is tied into other government line items, but Mirken estimates that it is somewhere between $7-8 billion a year.

“Local law enforcement doesn’t want to piss off the feds, who they often depend on for funding,” Mirken said. But he added that many retired law enforcement officials have spoken out against the war on drugs. A Massachusetts-based organization called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, for example, also calls for the legalization of marijuana.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that users could be prosecuted even in states where medical marijuana usage is legal. Prosecutions, however, have been very rare for users.

“Even the Bush administration isn’t stupid enough to have people in wheelchairs carted off in handcuffs on the six o’clock news,” Mirken said.

Though the current Democratic presidential candidates have signaled that they would curtail federal prosecutions of state marijuana programs, Mirken said, “You still see a little more caution at the highest levels of politicians.”

Several politicians have nevertheless spoken out in favor of medical marijuana, among them U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and former presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio).