President George W. Bush should heed the recommendation of the Drug Enforcement Administration's own administrative law judge, who has said that a University of Massachusetts professor should be allowed to grow a legal crop of marijuana that would be used for medical research.

Unfortunately, the Bush administration's anti-drug stance makes it unlikely that the president will allow the professor's proposal to move forward. The administration has dismissed claims about marijuana's benefits for people suffering from painful and wasting diseases. It has labeled as a "smoke screen," new research findings touting marijuana's medicinal benefits.

The new research reportedly gives further proof that marijuana provides more pain relief for AIDS patients than prescription medications prescribed for those patients.

That's not good news for the pharmaceutical companies that have developed those expensive medicines.

If Bush does in fact reject the University of Massachusetts proposal, it is to be hoped that his successor will reverse what some people regard as the unfeeling, closed-minded stance to which Bush has remained committed regarding the issue.

Bush doesn't have to relax his correct stance against recreational drug use in order to give the sought-after approval. And, the government would have options for monitoring the research to ensure that it sticks strictly to its outlined procedures and goals.

The federal government does have a 12-acre marijuana plot at the University of Mississippi. However, researchers contend that the crop provides neither the quantity nor quality of marijuana needed.

While the DEA judge, Mary Ellen Bittner, didn't officially embrace the criticism about the current crop's quality, she agreed with those who contend that the system for producing and distributing research marijuana is flawed.

"The existing supply of marijuana is not adequate," she said.

With Bittner on the side of assisting research efforts, Bush should give science the benefit of the doubt also; the University of Massachusetts should be granted the sought-after approval.

Medical progress should be the foundation for a ruling in this instance, not politics.

As Bittner observed, it "would be in the public interest" for the administration to give the University of Massachusetts the go-ahead to implement its proposal. She expressed the belief that there would be "minimal risk of diversion" tied to making the new marijuana source available.

It is wrong to doom seriously ill patients to unnecessary pain and suffering when an option for alleviating that misery might be available.

The DEA isn't required to follow what is outlined in Bittner's 88-page opinion. DEA administrators will hand down an official ruling.

Until then, people on both sides of the issue are being permitted to file further information with the DEA in an attempt to build their respective cases.

In regard to its proposal to grow research-grade marijuana, the University of Massachusetts has been confronting numerous bureaucratic and legal obstacles since 2001. During that same time, it has been common knowledge that some people in this country have been using marijuana illegally for the medical purposes on which the proposed research would be targeted.

The government should not legalize recreational use of marijuana. However, the government shouldn't deny marijuana to seriously ill people who could derive benefits from it.

Further medical research carried out with an adequate supply and quality of marijuana should be welcomed by Bush and the DEA, not thwarted.