http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153721,00.html
After years of steadfast refusals, the federal government has been slowly easing restrictions on pharmaceutical research into the medical benefits of some of the country’s most abused recreational drugs. In 2004, the FDA approved two separate studies into medicinal uses of MDMA (search) — also known as the psychedelic party drug Ecstasy.
A clinical trial at Harvard University will examine whether MDMA can help terminally ill cancer patients talk to their families about their illness and ultimate death. A psychiatrist in South Carolina is studying the drug's effects on women who are victims of rape or other sexual assaults in a private study.
But researchers who want to study the nation's most abused recreational drug — marijuana — are still in last place in the research race. Many researchers blame government bureaucracy and the conflicting missions of different government agencies that make obtaining marijuana for medical research nearly impossible.
"The FDA has approved marijuana studies and, if it were possible to get marijuana in order to conduct the studies, there would be a lot more research proposed and the FDA would approve more," said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Marijuana Policy Project (search), a lobbying group that seeks to legalize medical marijuana and reform drug-related crime laws.
"Our problem is that the [Drug Enforcement Agency] is blocking effective research from moving forward."
Dr. John Halpern, the psychiatrist who is heading up Harvard University's study of MDMA's effects on anxiety in dying cancer patients, said that the government's system for distributing marijuana for medical use creates difficult hurdles for researchers.
For example, the MDMA Halpern is using in his study is produced by companies that are contracted by the government, and given the appropriate licenses, to do so. The job of contracting and overseeing the production of cannabis for the government, however, is the domain of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. But critics say the NIDA has a conflict of interest because its mission is to prevent the use of marijuana regardless of the purpose. "[NIDA's] mission statement isn’t to look into any therapeutic effect from the drug of abuse, it’s to look into the harms," Halpern said. "So [they see the marijuana it controls as being] diverted to a non-NIDA funded study, and NIDA has that marijuana earmarked for more important things from their perspective."
Like Ecstasy,
marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug under the 1970 Controlled Substance Act, a group that includes
heroin and LSD, and has been deemed by the government to have no medical benefit and to be highly addictive. But unlike other Schedule I drugs, which can be obtained through government-licensed contractors, marijuana can be legally obtained for research only from the NIDA.
Craker filed his application to produce medical marijuana for federally approved studies in 2001. He finally received a rejection in 2004, despite strong showings of support from Senators John Kerry, D-Mass., and John Edwards, D-N.C.
"The DEA is attempting to follow their mandate, which I am sure is to keep marijuana off the streets for recreational use and they're doing the best they can there," Craker said. "They think the medical marijuana we produce would be for street use, which is not true, but I think that’s their opinion."
Craker and other researchers frustrated by the government's handling of medical marijuana research applications filed a suit against the DEA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse in July of 2004.
The FDA, DEA and Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment for this story.
Of course, researchers like Halpern emphasize that the scheduling system was put in place with the intentions of protecting the public from junk science studies and keeping illicit drugs away from the public.
But advocates for the research say political pandering, corporate greed and the power and influence of the pharmaceutical industry corrupt the system. The race to bring new drugs to the market is not only concerned with the health of the populace, they say, but also with the health of drug companies' stock portfolios, and a drug that patients can produce and use without their help is not good for drug makers' bottom line. "The federal government sits by while the FDA approves Vioxx, which leads to the death of many people, while marijuana in its history has never caused an overdose death," argues Fox.
Greg Lewis, co-author of the self-help book "End Your Addiction Now," says that with the pharmaceutical industry spending $38.8 billion on research and development in 2004, medical marijuana is superceded by drugs produced through proprietary research.
Lewis, however, is skeptical that research into medical marijuana amounts to much more than backdoor legislation for groups whose real agenda is legalizing the drug across the board.
"With just an absolute cornucopia of pharmacological substances out there for the purposes of dulling pain and making pain tolerable, it’s unimaginable to me that marijuana would be the only way that certain people can get relief from their pain," Lewis said.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More proof of government conspiracy to keep marijuana illegal, and raising revenue for the non-workable "War on Drugs".
What do you think?