DEA STYMIES SCIENCE

Disingenuousness is a specialty of the Drug Enforcement
Administration when it comes to the issue of medical marijuana.

The federal government likes to claim that there is little scientific
proof that smoking marijuana is therapeutic and relieves patient
suffering. Yet much of the research that legitimate academic and
medical scientists have tried to conduct to confirm the anecdotal
evidence of marijuana's benefits has been stymied through tight
federal supplies of legal marijuana available for testing purposes.

Former DEA Administrator Robert Bonner once told supporters of
medical marijuana that they would "serve society better by promoting
or sponsoring more legitimate scientific research" rather than using
the political process to make it legal. Of course, Bonner knew at the
time that it was his agency that had helped block that research.

Since 1968, all federally approved scientists have had to get their
marijuana from the University of Mississippi, a source that
researchers have complained is inadequate in quantity and quality. In
2001, Lyle Craker, a University of Massachusetts professor of plant
biology, sought approval to cultivate marijuana for medical study.
The agency turned him down, but a DEA administrative law judge ruled
this month that it "would be in the public interest" to allow Craker
to grow the plants.

The 87-page ruling followed a nine-day hearing in which researchers
recounted how the federal government rejected their requests for
marijuana in FDA-approved research. Administrative law Judge Mary
Ellen Bittner found that "an inadequate supply" of marijuana is
available for research purposes. Her ruling is nonbinding. But the
DEA should follow its sensible dictates and allow added licensed
growers to increase supplies.

Private laboratories have been allowed to produce controlled
substances such as LSD, "Ecstasy," heroin and cocaine for research
purposes. Only marijuana has been limited to a single supplier. It
also happens to be the drug most likely to prove benefits for
patients suffering from a host of ailments. Twelve states have
approved access to medical marijuana for patients who have a doctor's
recommendation. Yet, even in those states the DEA continues to treat
its use as criminal.

For too long federal policy toward marijuana has been grounded in
politics rather than science. By keeping such a tight rein on
supplies, it almost appears as though the DEA is afraid of what
medical science will discover when marijuana is finally put to the test.