It was nearly two years ago that the Obama White House issued its "Scientific Integrity" memorandum stating, "Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration."
Those of us involved in marijuana law reform welcomed the memo -- which came just months after the American Medical Association called for "facilitating ... clinical research and [the] development of cannabinoid-based medicines" -- and we hoped that it would stimulate the commencement of long-overdue human studies into the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis.
Those hopes were snuffed, however, when a representative from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the agency that oversees 85 percent of the world's research on controlled substances, reaffirmed its longstanding "no medi-pot" policy to The New York Times. "As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use," a spokesperson told the paper in 2010. "We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana."
A review of the U.S. National Institute of Health website clinicaltrials.gov shows that NIDA's kibosh on medical marijuana trials continues unabated. Though an online search of ongoing FDA-approved clinical trials using the keyword "cannabinoids" (the active components in marijuana) yielded me 65 worldwide hits, only six involved subjects's use of actual cannabis. (The others involved the use of synthetic cannabinoid agonists like dronabinol or nabilone, the commercially marketed marijuana extract Sativex, or the cannabinoid receptor blocking agent Rimonabant).
Of the six, two of the studies have already been completed: "Opioid and Cannabinoid Pharmacokinetic Interactions" and "Vaporization as a Smokeless Cannabis Delivery System," both of which were spearheaded by researchers (primarily Dr. Donald Abrams) at the University of California at San Francisco.
The four remaining studies are still in the "recruitment" phase. Of these, only two pertain to the potential medical use of cannabis: "Cannabis for Spasticity of Multiple Sclerosis," which is taking place at the University of California at Davis and is likely the final clinical trial associated with the soon-to-be-defunct and defunded California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research and "Cannabis for Inflammatory Bowel Disease," led by researchers at the Meir Medical Center in Israel.
Of the remaining studies, one focuses on the detection of cannabinoids and their metabolites on drug screens, while the other, entitled "Effects of Smoked Marijuana on Risk Taking and Decision Making Tasks," seeks to establish pot-related harms, hypothesizing that subjects "demonstrate poorer decision-making abilities and increased risk-taking behaviors" after smoking marijuana.
So much for the AMA's demand for clinical cannabis research.
By contrast, preclinical (animal) trials assessing the therapeutic efficacy of cannabinoids are occurring at a record pace. A keyword search on the search engine PubMed using the term "cannabinoids" yielded over 1,300 published papers in 2008, some 1,700 papers in 2009 and another 1,200 published last year.
While many of these studies highlight the ability of cannabinoids to manage a wide range of symptoms, even more intriguing are the results indicating the potential of cannabinoid intervention to halt the development of serious diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease and multiple sclerosis. Nevertheless, without abrupt changes at the highest levels of government -- changes that do not appear to be forthcoming despite this administration's public demand for "scientific integrity" -- scientists will indefinitely lack the human follow-up data necessary to adequately answer societal questions regarding cannabis safety, efficacy and proper dosage.
"Change we can believe in?" Not when it comes to studying pot.
Our government is scandalous, but until there is some sort of revolution we're pretty much screwed.
http://www.jackherer.com/thebook/chapter-five/
"After the 1938-1944 New York City ”LaGuardia Marijuana Report” refuted his argument, by reporting that marijuana caused no violence at all and citing other positive results, Harry J. Anslinger, in public tirade after tirade, denounced Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, the New York Academy of Medicine and the doctors who researched the report.
Anslinger proclaimed that these doctors would never again do marijuana experiments or research without his personal permission, or be sent to jail!"
THE LAWS PROHIBITING MARIJUANA ARE NOT A RESULT OF ANY HARM FROM MARIJUANA. THEY ARE THE RESULT OF LIES, GREED and racism. Read the well documented proof of that and a lot more marijuana TRUTH in these two articles: “MARIJUANA AND HEMP THE UNTOLD STORY, Thomas J. Bouril” and “WHY IS MARIJUANA ILLEGAL, Pete Guither”, click the links to those articles on this webpage:
Internet Explorer web browser: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/home
All Other Browsers: http://jsknow.angelfire.com/index.html
www.GreenPassion.org
have fun!
www.GreenPassion,org
and many user testimonials about cannabis as well.
Most of those groups see it as an atrocity to be illegal as a medicine... they see it as an abuse of power for it to be illegal.
Government should not be used to impose a moral agenda... drug use is a moral agenda, just like abortion is.... it is arguably better to expand personal rights, rather than shrink them.
It's time to throw some more Tea in the harbor! Learn what the Tea Party is all about, it is NOT the Republican party! It is a nonpartisan grass roots movement by We The People. The core values of the Tea Party are:Constitutionally limited Government, Fiscal responsibility and Free Markets.
Put an end to big Government and get Uncle SHAM out of your private life!
Put Ron Paul in the Whitehouse in 2012 or sooner! He supports We The People and the Constitution better than any Federal public servant we have. He can't be bought by crooked corporations and his voting record proves it!
"The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
I'd love to see him appoint Judge Andrew Napolitano to the Supreme Court too!
The ONLY way we are going to see "Change we can believe in" is if "We The People" make it happen. That's exacly what's going on with the Tea Party... WE THE PEOPLE ARE TAKING ACTION! It's not about a particular party, left, right, or anything except getting the crooks out of office that are ignoring the Constitution and the Freedom and Liberty it documents and replacing them with Constitutionally minded PUBLIC SERVANTS..
However, alot of these synthetic products are created and then just sold, we have NO idea what effect they may have in the long run.
The marijuana prohibition empowers drug dealers and cartels, and makes our children LESS safe! Because of the failings of the prohibition, our children now have easier access to marijuana than to alcohol! We parents have been patient long enough, we must speak up and demand that marijuana be legally sold to adults in gas stations and supermarkets just as beer and wine are today!
We need laws based on LOGIC, not ideology! We need to Legalize Adult Marijuana sales!!