Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1977 interview with the now-defunct pornographic magazine Oui is not recommended reading for anyone without a strong stomach for vulgarity. But the interview helps explain the soundness of one of the actor's public-policy positions.

Schwarzenegger smoked marijuana, enjoyed it and still managed to become an ambitious, intelligent actor and businessman who built a sterling career for himself. This must give him a healthy skepticism for the unthinking hostility toward marijuana that infects our political culture and drives the federal government's lunatic campaign against the drug, as if anyone who ever tries it is doomed to become a stoner.

The flash point in the marijuana wars at the moment is the fight over the medical use of the drug. Schwarzenegger is in favor of legalizing it, as are most Californians. The state passed a ballot initiative permitting the medical use of marijuana with 55 percent of the vote in 1996. Eight other states have legalized it as well, creating friction with the feds, who don't want grievously ill patients to get relief if it means taking the untoward expedient of lighting a joint.

Of course, if the congressmen who maintain the federal prohibition on medical marijuana had to put their heads in toilet bowls several times a day to vomit from the effects of chemotherapy, they might be less categorical in condemning what some patients do to relieve their nausea. But the federal government has never been famous for its common sense or flexibility, so the war against medical marijuana lumbers on, even in the states that have legalized it.

Since the feds systematically suppress attempts to study the potential medical benefits of marijuana, the most important datum in the debate is simply this: Some patients say smoking marijuana is the best way that they can get relief from the nausea associated with chemotherapy and the wasting illness associated with HIV/AIDS. Smoking the drug works better for some patients than Marinol pills, which contain pure THC and have more side effects.

The New England Journal of Medicine has advocated the legalization of medical marijuana. In May, the journal Lancet Neurology reported that marijuana's active components alleviate pain in almost every lab test, and called it potentially "the aspirin of the 21st century." Earlier this year, the New York State Association of County Health Officials came out in favor of medical marijuana.