WEED CONTROL

Research on the Medicinal Benefits of Marijuana May Depend on Good
Gardening--and Some Say Uncle Sam, the Country's Only Legal Grower of
the Cannabis Plant, Isn't Much of a Green Thumb

LYLE CRAKER HAS a number of plants on his mind. An agronomist and
professor in the Department of Plant, Soil & Insect Sciences at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he's currently analyzing the
active ingredients in black cohosh, which is used to alleviate
symptoms of menopause.

He is also studying goldenseal, a native American plant that shows
promise as a treatment for some skin irritations, and exploring the
possibility that certain Chinese medicinal plants could be cultivated
in Massachusetts for research purposes.

There is another medicinal plant that Craker would like to grow and
study, but in this instance, his prospects will be determined in a
courtroom. Since 2001, Craker has been seeking a license from the
Drug Enforcement Administration to establish a medical-marijuana
growth facility at UMass-Amherst. It would be the second such
facility in the US; at present, the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
a federal agency, produces the only legal supply of cannabis in the
country at the University of Mississippi.

The DEA lists cannabis as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has a
high potential for abuse and no accepted medical uses. However,
marijuana is unique on the Schedule I roster-which also includes
cocaine, LSD, and MDMA (Ecstasy)-as the only substance that is not
available from multiple independent producers for clinical research purposes.

"There are two issues here: quality and access," says Rick Doblin,
the Belmont-based founder and president of the nonprofit
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which
is sponsoring Craker's suit against the DEA. The government holds
that its Mississippi operation obviates the need for a second crop.
Craker and MAPS counter that NIDA cultivates a product of poor
quality and does not make it readily available to qualified
researchers, and point to NIDA's previous refusals to supply cannabis
to two scientists with FDA-approved protocols as grounds for
establishing an independent facility.

On April 20, the Food and Drug Administration released a
controversial statement declaring that marijuana "has no currently
accepted medical use in treatment in the United States." The outcome
of Craker's case-especially if it reaches federal court, as is
likely-could realign the terms of the national debate over medical marijuana.

For now, the suit, which has the expressed support of Senators Edward
Kenedy and John Kerry, as well as 38 members of the House of
Representatives, is in the hands of DEA Administrative Law Judge Mary
Ellen Bittner, who's expected to make her recommendation to the
agency on the application sometime this summer.

Final briefs were filed on May 8.

There is abundant anecdotal evidence and personal testimony to
support myriad uses of cannabis to treat symptoms of cancer, AIDS,
multiple sclerosis, and other ailments.

As the FDA reiterated in its statement, however, scant clinical
evidence exists to back these claims-or, for that matter, to
contradict them. Paradoxically, the controls on official research of
cannabis in America undermine both the medical-marijuana movement's
efforts to prove the drug's benefits and the government's assertions
of its dangers.

Strangely enough, the case for pharmaceutical cannabis may, in the
end, come down to good gardening-and may depend on whether the
government is willing to give up its monopoly on marijuana.

Cannabis sativa was once widely recommended by American physicians as
a mild sedative, much as the popular herbal treatments valerian and
camomile are used today.

By 1937, however, the drug had been effectively outlawed by the
Marihuana Tax Act. The Federal Bureau of Narcotics had aggressively
pursued this ban with Congress, and cited marijuana's perceived
popularity as a smoked narcotic among Mexican farm laborers,
hysterical tabloid reports on its deranging effects, and results from
tests on canine subjects.

Punishments for pot-related offenses remained light into the 1980s,
and President Carter favored decriminalization. It wasn't until the
War on Drugs gathered momentum midway through the Reagan
administration that penalties became fearsome enough to drive
marijuana growers indoors-which, it turned out, was the best possible
place for a cannabis plant to thrive.

In "The Botany of Desire: A Plant's Eye View of the World" (2001),
author Michael Pollan has an epiphany while visiting a "grow room"
run by an acquaintance. "[I]t dawned on me," he writes, "that this
was what the best gardeners of my generation had been doing all these
years: They had been underground, perfecting cannabis."

From the standpoint of both the scientist and the connoisseur,
perfect cannabis can be achieved with unseeded, genetically identical
female plants. The original crop is harvested from seeds, and
subsequent generations are bred from cuttings.

Characterized by the "buds" from which marijuana derives one of its
many slang names, these virgin female plants carry high levels of
molecules unique to the cannabis plant, called cannabinoids. The two
most well-understood cannabinoids are THC and CBD, which many
physicians and patients believe can alleviate nausea, stimulate
appetite, ease pain and anxiety, and lessen the muscle stiffness and
spasms associated with MS.

In the UK, the GW Pharmaceuticals company has a government license to
grow cannabis under highly regulated conditions. At a secret location
in southern England, in greenhouses that are computer-controlled for
temperature, humidity, and light, the GW research team has compiled a
veritable library of plant strains, with precisely determined ratios
of cannabinoid content.

The upshot is Sativex, a liquid extract of equal parts THC and CBD
that is sprayed under the tongue to treat neuropathic pain. Britain
permits the use of Sativex in MS patients, and the drug has been
approved for marketing in Canada. Cannabinoids also have a presence
on the US market, in the recently approved Cesamet, a synthetic
cannabinoid, and in Marinol, a THC extract in pill form that the FDA
approved back in 1985. But Marinol contains no CBD, and ingested THC
is metabolized differently from smoked marijuana-the palliative
effects take much longer to kick in, and the psychoactive effects are
far stronger.

Craker's intentions for a Massachusetts site are similar to the GW
template: an indoor facility housing female clones, with strains made
to order for researchers according to exact cannabinoid content.

In contrast to the methods practiced by GW and by America's outlaw
gardeners, however, NIDA grows the majority of its marijuana
outdoors, under conditions that result in unwanted pollination and,
according to some users, a harsh product.

The Institute harvested its most recent marijuana crop in Mississippi
in 2002, and stockpiled the supply in vaults and freezers.

Cannabinoid content of NIDA pot is highly variable, and a THC potency
of 6 to 8 percent is about as high as researchers can hope for. By
contrast, Canada distributes medical marijuana to patients at 12.5
percent, and medical marijuana in the Netherlands ranges from 13 to
18 percent potency.

"I've spoken to patients who have used [NIDA marijuana], and they've
said it's everything from worthless to other descriptions I should
not use," Craker says. "The patient has to smoke one cigarette after
the other to get any effective relief from pain." Ethan Russo, a
neurologist and now a senior medical adviser to GW Pharmaceuticals,
conducted patient studies with NIDA marijuana and reported, "A close
inspection of the contents of NIDA-supplied cannabis cigarettes
reveals them to be a crude mixture of leaf with abundant stem and
seed components.. . .The resultant smoke is thick, acrid, and pervasive."

Then again, it's not in NIDA's job description-or even, perhaps, in
NIDA's interests-to grow a world-class marijuana crop. The
institute's director, Nora Volkow, has stressed that it's "not NIDA's
mission to study the medicinal use of marijuana or to advocate for
the establishment of facilities to support this research." Since
NIDA's stated mission "is to lead the Nation in bringing the power of
science to bear on drug abuse and addiction," federally supported
marijuana research will logically tilt toward the potential harms,
not benefits, of cannabis. Under these circumstances, evidence in
support of medical marijuana tends to materialize as a byproduct, not
a primary goal, of official research. For example, Donald Tashkin of
UCLA intended to demonstrate via a NIDA-supported study that
marijuana smoke increases the risk of lung and upper-airways cancer.

But the findings of the study, announced this past week, indicate
that heavy marijuana smokers actually show lower cancer rates than
tobacco smokers, indirectly supporting claims by medical-marijuana
proponents for the tumor-inhibiting properties of cannabinoids. . . .
At the moment, federal law prohibits pot cultivation even in those
states (11 at last count) that have passed medical-marijuana
referenda. In 1996, Californians voted in favor of the Compassionate
Use Act, also known as Proposition 215, which permitted the use and
cultivation of marijuana by qualified patients.

According to the act, patients with a referral from a physician can
obtain medical marijuana from one of some 200 dispensaries or
"buyers' clubs," which procure their high-grade stock from
tucked-away farms and discreet greenhouses. Despite the ever present
threat of a crackdown from the federal government, these companies
are thriving-some clubs even offer their employees healthcare
benefits and 401(k) plans-and have created a market for medical marijuana.

"For evidence in support of the healthy competition fostered by a
marketplace economy, you need only to look at the quality of
marijuana available in California," says Mark Blumenthal, who directs
the nonprofit American Botanical Council of Austin, Texas. "Pluralism
and economic competition are good for the consumer. We generally
don't allow and empower monopolies in our culture-it's contrary to
the tenets of our economic system."

The invocation of a government monopoly on marijuana helps to explain
the strange bedfellows on the pro-cannabis side of this issue.

The conservative historian Richard Brookhiser and the late Reagan
aide Lyn Nofziger both spoke out in favor of medical marijuana, and
supporters of Craker's suit against the DEA include not only several
nurses' associations and the United Methodist Church but Grover
Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a staunch
defender of small government and an unfettered free market.

"The use of controlled substances for legitimate research purposes is
well-established, and has yielded a number of miracle medicines
widely available to patients and doctors," Norquist wrote in his
letter of support. "This case should be no different.
It's in the public interest to end the government monopoly on
marijuana legal for research."

Given Norquist's many successes on the lobbying circuit, perhaps all
medical marijuana needs is a new pitch man.