Smoked marijuana provided the same amount or more pain relief to patients in a study as they would get customarily from prescription medications, the Washington Post reported Feb. 13.

A study conducted at San Francisco General Hospital using low-potentcy, government-provided marijuana found that AIDS patients who suffer from nerve pain reported positive results from smoking three marijuana cigarettes daily. More than half of the test subjects reported significant pain reduction, compared to less than a quarter of patients who were given a placebo (marijuana with the active ingredients removed).

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) criticized the findings as a "smoke screen" and "not terribly persuasive," saying that the study was short on evidence and didn't consider the risks of smoking marijuana. But others said the report proved that the Drug Enforcement Administration was wrong to classify marijuana as having no medical use.

"This should be a wake-up call for Congress to hold hearings to investigate the therapeutic use of cannabis and to encourage more research," said Barbara T. Roberts of Americans for Safe Access; Roberts once served as an interim associate deputy director at ONDCP.

In related news, an administrative law judge ruled this week that the DEA should act "in the public interest" and allow a University of Massachusetts researcher to cultivate marijuana for use in research studies. The DEA is not obligated to heed the advice of the judge, however.

The study appears in the Feb. 13, 2007 issue of the journal Neurology.