San Mateo County officials have gained tentative federal approval for a locally funded medicinal marijuana trial to test whether it reduces suffering for terminally ill patients.

County Supervisor Mike Nevin said Monday that he was excited by the U.S.  Health and Human Services Department's endorsement of the local clinical trials, which are expected to begin this summer.

The San Mateo County study on whether marijuana can reduce pain and nausea for AIDS patients could get under way in a few months assuming final approvals also come, as expected, from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and U.S.  Food and Drug Administration.

For more than two years, Nevin, a former San Francisco police officer, has been a leading advocate for distribution of medicinal marijuana to people suffering from AIDS, glaucoma, chronic pain and other serious ailments.

Nevin said county health officials received a letter late last week notifying them that a panel of scientists at the U.S.  Health and Human Services Department have endorsed the basic plan -- with a few conditions.  Those conditions were mainly safety concerns about storage and distribution of the marijuana, Nevin said.

For example, the panel wanted to be sure that no more than five marijuana cigarettes would be passed out to patients at one time.  Nevin said none of the conditions poses a problem from local researchers' point of view.

``Those are issues they can easily deal with,'' he said.

Nevin said the trials will begin with 60 San Mateo County patients who agree to participate.  He said these trials could be a catalyst to make marijuana a prescription drug -- which would make it more widely accepted as a method of treatment.

``The politics of the issue got way ahead of the scientific medical field and there have been no clinical trials to determine from a scientific standpoint that in fact this substance works in the way we say it does,'' Nevin said.  ``According to the testimony of the many people we've heard from, marijuana hits the system faster and in some cases is the only relief from the terrible pain caused by that kind of nausea.''

The unusual county proposal came in the wake of state Proposition 215 in 1996, in which voters approved the use of marijuana by seriously ill patients.  After rejecting a businessman's proposal to create a Redwood City office to hand out the marijuana to patients and caregivers, the board of supervisors set aside $500,000 for the study.

Federal approval will mean that coveted research-quality marijuana can be released to San Mateo County scientists for their study.  Nevin said the county will get it from the University of Mississippi, where the federally grown marijuana is cultivated.

Nevin said he hopes that positive study results may lead to making marijuana available to AIDS, cancer and glaucoma patients as a legal pharmaceutical in California and nationwide.
MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart