CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN? NOT FOR MEDICAL MARIJUANA RESEARCH

So Much for the American Medical Association's Demand for Clinical
Cannabis Research.

It was nearly two years ago that the Obama White House issued its
"Scientific Integrity" memorandum stating, "Science and the
scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration."

Those of us involved in marijuana law reform welcomed the memo --
which came just months after the American Medical Association called
for "facilitating ... clinical research and [the] development of
cannabinoid-based medicines" -- and we hoped that it would stimulate
the commencement of long-overdue human studies into the safety and
efficacy of medical cannabis.

Those hopes were snuffed, however, when a representative from the
U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the agency that
oversees 85 percent of the world's research on controlled substances,
reaffirmed its longstanding "no medi-pot" policy to The New York
Times. "As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is
primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use," a
spokesperson told the paper in 2010. "We generally do not fund
research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana."

A review of the U.S. National Institute of Health website
clinicaltrials.gov shows that NIDA's kibosh on medical marijuana
trials continues unabated. Though an online search of ongoing
FDA-approved clinical trials using the keyword "cannabinoids" (the
active components in marijuana) yielded me 65 worldwide hits, only
six involved subjects's use of actual cannabis. (The others involved
the use of synthetic cannabinoid agonists like dronabinol or
nabilone, the commercially marketed marijuana extract Sativex, or the
cannabinoid receptor blocking agent Rimonabant).

Of the six, two of the studies have already been completed: "Opioid
and Cannabinoid Pharmacokinetic Interactions" and "Vaporization as a
Smokeless Cannabis Delivery System," both of which were spearheaded
by researchers (primarily Dr. Donald Abrams) at the University of
California at San Francisco.

The four remaining studies are still in the "recruitment" phase. Of
these, only two pertain to the potential medical use of cannabis:
"Cannabis for Spasticity of Multiple Sclerosis," which is taking
place at the University of California at Davis and is likely the
final clinical trial associated with the soon-to-be-defunct and
defunded California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research and
"Cannabis for Inflammatory Bowel Disease," led by researchers at the
Meir Medical Center in Israel.

Of the remaining studies, one focuses on the detection of
cannabinoids and their metabolites on drug screens, while the other,
entitled "Effects of Smoked Marijuana on Risk Taking and Decision
Making Tasks," seeks to establish pot-related harms, hypothesizing
that subjects "demonstrate poorer decision-making abilities and
increased risk-taking behaviors" after smoking marijuana.

So much for the AMA's demand for clinical cannabis research.

By contrast, preclinical (animal) trials assessing the therapeutic
efficacy of cannabinoids are occurring at a record pace. A keyword
search on the search engine PubMed using the term "cannabinoids"
yielded over 1,300 published papers in 2008, some 1,700 papers in
2009 and another 1,200 published last year.

While many of these studies highlight the ability of cannabinoids to
manage a wide range of symptoms, even more intriguing are the results
indicating the potential of cannabinoid intervention to halt the
development of serious diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Lou
Gehrig's disease and multiple sclerosis. Nevertheless, without abrupt
changes at the highest levels of government -- changes that do not
appear to be forthcoming despite this administration's public demand
for "scientific integrity" -- scientists will indefinitely lack the
human follow-up data necessary to adequately answer societal
questions regarding cannabis safety, efficacy and proper dosage.

"Change we can believe in?" Not when it comes to studying pot.