UMASS PROFESSOR SEEKS OK TO GROW MARIJUANA LEGALLY

For more than 30 years, University of Massachusetts professor Lyle Craker
has worked in obscurity, experimenting with medicinal plants like black
cohosh, goldenseal, and maca.

Now he wants to grow a far more controversial plant in his Amherst lab: the
strongest research marijuana in the country.

Craker is awaiting a decision from the US Drug Enforcement Administration
that could make UMass only the second institution in America to grow
marijuana legally. A public comment period on his application ends next month.

Currently, the University of Mississippi provides all the marijuana plants
for medical researchers, who are experimenting with the drug as an antidote
to pain for patients with such ailments as AIDS and cancer. Craker says he
could grow a stronger, higher-quality product, and do it without government
funding.

"When you have a complete monopoly you have no incentive to improve the
material," said Craker. "In science there needs to be friendly competition
in order to push the frontiers. It's the capitalist system, you could say."

UMass officials including Chancellor John V. Lombardi have approved
Craker's quest for permission. Five members of the Massachusetts
congressional delegation urged the DEA in a letter last year to allow
privately funded facilities to produce marijuana (The signers were
Representatives Barney Frank, John W. Olver, James P. McGovern, William D.
Delahunt, and Michael E. Capuano.)

Yet Craker is fighting an uphill battle. Former DEA chief Asa Hutchinson
responded to the congressmen with a letter saying that as long as the
University of Mississippi "continues to meet the nation's need for
research-grade marijuana while maintaining the highest level of safeguards
against diversion," an international treaty and US law "dictate that it
remain the sole domestic producer."

But Craker's proposal would not violate the treaty or the law, say his
supporters -- including the American Civil Liberties Union, which sent the
DEA an eight-page letter to that effect last year.

Craker said his lab is prepared to take extraordinary precautions,
including hiring a 24-hour guard and installing security cameras. He said
that all plant materials, as small as a single fallen leaf, would have to
be carefully catalogued and destroyed under his proposal, which was first
reported in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

Craker would not do the research himself, but rather make the marijuana
available to federally approved scientists. Researchers would pay for the
plant, although Craker shied away from saying he was "selling" marijuana.

"I know that UMass is desperate for money, but I can just see the
headlines," he said, adding that the money would partly go simply to pay
for the lab's guards. "It's going to be expensive," said Craker, who works
in the department of plant and soil sciences.

If the DEA rejects Craker's bid after the public comment period ends Sept.
22, the professor can appeal to a federal administrative judge.

He has already received a small grant from an advocacy group called the
Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelics Studies. The group's
president, Richard Doblin, could not be reached yesterday because he was at
the Burning Man festival in Nevada.