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and histories worth considering. Though this author could not fact-check everything, the congressional actions were real and the cultural sentiments are well known to anyone who grew up during or since the Reagan administration. The argument has been put forth that marijuana is a "gateway" drug. However, a National Institute on Drug Abuse-funded study at the University of Pittsburgh recently found that social factors determine whether marijuana use will lead to the use of harder drugs more than the pharmacology. It has been speculated that the laws making marijuana illegal opens the door for people to come into contact with the gatekeepers of harder, more socially debilitating drugs. In my, and others, opinion - psychologically, once crossing the line into illegal, using other drugs does not seem as taboo.

As of now there are approximately 60 known cannabinoids which might have medicinal applications. There is a synthetic version of THC used to relieve nausea and stimulate appetite, Marinol, but its effects do not equal that of the herb, the whole being greater than any one of its parts. There are benefits of smoking marijuana beyond pain remedies going back centuries and alleviating nausea in chemotherapy patients, but also for treating nerve injury and multiple sclerosis, the wasting seen in AIDS patients, and THC has been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer's.

There has been some contradictory research looking at the effects of smoking marijuana cigarettes. In December 1999, researchers at UCLA reported that marijuana smoking may increase the risk of head and neck cancers. They found that molecular alterations in the respiratory tract, which may be responsible for the development of the cancers, were potentially related to smoking tobacco and marijuana. In January of this year a study published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) found that smoking-related head and neck skin cancers are actually associated with several specific inherent genetic alterations. The earlier study at UCLA had also found that there is an interplay between marijuana smoking and genetic defects, specifically inhibitions in DNA repair. Many studies over the years have found that the tar from pure cannabis contains higher levels of carcinogen activator, but a 2001 UCLA research study found that THC activates the metabolizing enzyme related to the development of smoking related cancers (Cyp1A1) via a different receptor than tobacco, thus resulting in inhibited

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