A Conversation With Mahmoud A. ElSohly

GROWING MARIJUANA WITH GOVERNMENT APPROVAL

Q. What exactly does the marijuana project do?

A. Though cannabis had been used by man for thousands of years, it
wasn't until 1964 that the actual chemical structure of the active
ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol -- THC -- was determined. That
stimulated new research on the plant.

At this laboratory, which began in 1968, we often investigate
marijuana's chemistry. We also have a farm where we grow cannabis for
federally approved researchers. Our material is employed in clinical
studies around the country, to see if the active ingredient in this
plant is useful for pain, nausea, glaucoma, for AIDS patients and so
on. For these tests, researchers need standardized material for
cigarettes or THC pills. We grow the cannabis as contractors for the
National Institute on Drug Abuse -- NIDA. And the only researchers
who can get our material are those with special permits from the Drug
Enforcement Administration and NIDA. We have visitors at the building
now and then who ask, "Oh, do you give samples?" We say, "No!"

Q. Why bother cultivating your own marijuana when law enforcement
organizations seize bricks of it every day?

A. The most obvious reason is that with confiscated marijuana, you
don't really know what you have. When researchers are performing
clinical tests, they must have standardized material that will be the
same every time. And it must be safe. You certainly wouldn't want to
give a sick person something sprayed with pesticide or angel dust,
substances we've detected in some illicit marijuana.

When this project first started in the late 1960s, people thought,
"Oh, we'll get materials for testing after a big bust happens." So
the first batch was acquired that way. They made an extract out of
the seized material, and it turned out to be contaminated with tung
oil. That brought home the point: if you're going to do clinical
trials on humans, you'd better know what you're using and where it
came from. Hence, our farm.

Another thing: pharmaceutical researchers are often looking at
something they call "the dose response." They want to know what
happens to a patient smoking a marijuana cigarette with 1 percent THC
versus 2 percent or 8 percent. Without standardized material, you
can't accurately test which produced the best or worst result.

Q. One of the basic principles of agronomy is to start with good
seeds. Where do your seeds come from?

A. That's a very good question. Most of the illicit material in the
1960s came from Mexico. So, in collaboration with the D.E.A. and the
Mexican government, we acquired those seeds. Later, we acquired
others from Colombia, Thailand, Jamaica, India, Pakistan and places
in the Middle East. That permitted us to study chemical and botanical
differences. By 1976, we were growing about 96 different varieties.

Interestingly, that led us to see that there was only one species of
cannabis. It had always been thought that there were many. But you
could see that the chemistry of this plant is the same qualitatively
no matter where it comes from. What makes each different is the
relative proportion of the different chemicals in there, which
doesn't make a different species. It's really the same species, but
different varieties of it. The different types of varieties hybridize
very easily.

Q. Does this mean that one could make genetically modified cannabis?

A. Yes. Absolutely. That actually has been the trend over the years
in the cultivation in the illicit market, and also in the legal
market, where we are doing genetic selection, where we select
specific materials that have the genes that produce higher levels of
THC or some of the other ingredients.

Q. So out there in rural northern California, have they been
improving their crops with modern genetics?

A. They have been doing genetic selection for years. You can see the
potency keeps going up. In the 1970s, the seized marijuana had
probably 1 percent or less of the active ingredient. Now, it's about
8 percent, on the average.

Q. How did you come to your unusual specialty?

A. The honest truth is that it began out of necessity. In 1975, while
I was in my last year of graduate school in natural products
chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, the Lord provided me with
twin daughters. My graduate student stipend was already over, and my
adviser said, "You need to quickly find a job."

So he recommended me for a postdoctoral fellowship at the University
of Mississippi's Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. My
first job here had to do with poison ivy. Then a better-paying
position opened up at the Marijuana Project, and I moved to that. I
liked the research, and I got on well with my supervisor and mentor,
Dr. Carlton Turner, who later became the director of drug abuse
policy in the Reagan White House. So, this work, it just happened.

Q. Do your neighbors ever kid you about your job?

A. My daughters, when they were in grade school, the teachers would
ask them, "What does your father do?" And they'd say, "He grows
marijuana." And the teachers' eyes would grow wide. After a while, my
daughters said: "He works at the University of Mississippi. He's a professor."