CAN POT EXTEND TED KENNEDY'S LIFE? TOO BAD IT'S ILLEGAL

In the 14 years I've worked in marijuana law reform, few events have
struck me as so needlessly tragic as the federal government's
consistent and deliberate stifling of medical cannabis research.
Nowhere is the Fed's refusal to allow this science more overt and
inhumane than as it pertains to the investigation of cannabinoids as
anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of gliomas.

As noted in today's wire stories regarding Sen. Edward Kennedy's
diagnosis, glioma is an aggressive form of cancer that affects an
estimated 10,000 Americans annually. Standard treatments for the
cancer include radiation and chemotherapy, though neither procedure
has proven particularly effective -- the disease kills approximately
half its victims within one year and all within three years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could
selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells intact? And
what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but
deliberately withheld this information from the public?

Sadly, the above questions are not hypothetical. As I originally wrote
in a 2004 essay for Alternet.org, titled Pot Shows Promise as a Cancer
Cure":

In fact, the first experiment documenting pot's anti-tumor effects
took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of
the U.S. government. The results of that study, reported in an Aug.
18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana's
psychoactive component, THC, "slowed the growth of lung cancers,
breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and
prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."

Despite these favorable preliminary findings, U.S. government
officials banished the study and refused to fund any follow-up
research until conducting a similar -- though secret -- clinical trial
in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the U.S. National
Toxicology Program to the tune of $2 million, concluded that mice and
rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater
protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls.

However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers
shelved the results, which only became public after a draft copy of
its findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal which in turn
forwarded the story to the national media.

In the years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial,
the U.S. government has yet to fund a single additional study
examining the drug's potential anti-cancer properties. Is this a case
of federal bureaucrats putting politics over the health and safety of
patients? You be the judge.

Fortunately, in the past 10 years scientists overseas have generously
picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that
cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells -- including
prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and in
one human clinical trial, brain cancer.

Writing earlier this year in the journal Expert Review of
Neurotherapeutics, Italian researchers reiterated, "(C)annabinoids
have displayed a great potency in reducing glioma tumor growth either
in vitro or in animal experimental models. (They) appear to be
selective antitumoral agents as they kill glioma cells without
affecting the viability of nontransformed counterparts." Not one
mainstream media outlet reported their findings. Perhaps now they'll
pay better attention.

What possible advancements in the treatment of cancer may have been
achieved over the past 34 years had U.S. government officials chosen
to advance -- rather than suppress -- clinical research into the
anti-cancer effects of cannabis? It's a shame we have to speculate;
it's even more tragic that the families of Senator Kennedy and
thousands of others must suffer while we do.

Watch a video of Paul Armentano explaining the relationship between
cannabinoids and giloma.

Paul Armentano is the deputy director for the NORML Foundation in
Washington, D.C.