JUDGE BACKS PROFESSOR'S BID TO GROW MARIJUANA

An administrative law judge recommended yesterday that a professor at
the University of Massachusetts at Amherst be allowed to grow
marijuana for research purposes, possibly making the state host to
the nation's second laboratory authorized to grow the drug.

Professor Lyle Craker, a horticulturist who specializes in medicinal
plants, has won support from both Senators Edward M. Kennedy and John
F. Kerry in his effort to grow marijuana for research.

Marijuana is now only legally grown at the University of Mississippi,
but Craker has argued that the drug grown there is neither potent
enough nor readily available to researchers.

In her opinion, which can be overruled by the US Drug Enforcement
Administration, Judge Mary Ellen Bittner said Craker's bid to grow
marijuana "would be in the public interest."

"There would be minimal risk of diversion of marijuana," she wrote.
"There is currently an inadequate supply of marijuana available for
research purposes . . . [and] competition in the provision of
marijuana for such purposes is inadequate."

In a phone interview, Craker said he had not read the 87-page
opinion. "I understand it's favorable, and that's good," he said.

Rick Doblin -- president of the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies, a drug research group based in Belmont that
hopes to sponsor Craker's work -- called the decision "a major turning point."

"This is a major step to getting us to do the scientific research
that the government has been blocking for the past 30 years," Doblin
said. "If the government says no, the hypocrisy of their approach
will help fuel efforts for state medical marijuana reforms."

Garrison Courtney, a DEA spokesman, declined to comment on the
ruling. "We're still reviewing the opinion," he said. "We'll make a
determination at a later point."

Craker first applied to the DEA for permission to grow marijuana in
2001. Kennedy and Kerry later wrote a letter to the DEA, saying that
the Mississippi lab had an "unjustified monopoly."

In 2004, Craker and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies sued the government in federal court, charging the DEA with
unreasonable delays.

The DEA promptly rejected their bid. In 2005, Craker and the group
sought the opinion from an administrative law judge.

If the DEA's administrator decides to reject Bittner's
recommendation, Doblin said Craker and the group would file another
lawsuit in federal court.