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For several decades, researchers have sought to determine whether marijuana has legitimate medical uses, and narcotics control agencies have discouraged them from finding out. Now a new round of federally funded research may provide some answers-or will it? The ....

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.... Administration (DEA). However, the medical use of marijuana has been gaining respectability. Several states have research programs of their own and some governors, including Republican William Weld of Massachusetts, openly endorse medical legalization. The editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Jerome Kassirer, lambasted the Clinton administration in an editorial entitled, "Federal Foolishness and Marijuana," that received national attention. "To prohibit physicians from alleviating suffering by prescribing marijuana for seriously ill patients," Kassirer wrote, "is misguided, heavyhanded, and inhumane." In January, Dire ....