FEDERAL CANNABIS PROVIDED TO SELECT FEW

Medical Marijuana Grown And Distributed Since 1989

The U.S. department of Health and Human Services is growing marijuana for
medical use, according to department officials and marijuana recipients.

Although the federal program researching medicinal applications of
marijuana was aborted in 1992, a few test subjects are still smoking
marijuana grown by the federal government.

The program was never granted an official name, according to Steven Gust,
acting director of the institute's international program.

The experimental program allowed individuals to apply for access to
marijuana, a substance the program helped redefine as an "investigative new
drug."

"It has long been postulated that there could be medical benefits from
either marijuana or from some of the compounds," said Campbell Gardett,
department spokesman. "Our role in all of this, as a science agency, is to
try and determine whether there is a legitimate benefit that could be
derived from marijuana."

The departmental tasked with growing, storing and distributing federal
research-grade marijuana is the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

"The government actually has a contract with the University of Mississippi
to grow marijuana," Gust said. "There is actually a lot of research that's
going on, on marijuana."

The research Gust referred to does not focus on marijuana's potential
applications. Instead, it examines the effects of marijuana.

"I smoke about a quarter ounce a day," said George McMahon, recipient of
the federally-produced medical marijuana and former test subject. "It's
mostly leaf."

According to Gust, researching medical applications of illegal substances
is permitted if they are classified as investigative new drugs by the FDA.

"They grow a consistent research grade of marijuana," Gardett said of the
institute.

McMahon's access to the institute's medical marijuana was approved to
alleviate pain, spasms and nausea.

"I actually filed my first application in '88," McMahon said. "By 1990 they
had run out of reasons why they couldn't give me marijuana."

Following a review of the medical-marijuana patient program in 1992, the
overseeing department closed access to new members.

Despite the program's closure to new patients, the few original patients
are still receiving federal marijuana as a medical treatment.

"It was decided in 1992 that the patients who existed in the program - I
guess for humanitarian reasons - were allowed to continue the program,"
Gust said. "One of the unfortunate things about the patient program is that
it's all individual patients."

Explaining that legitimate research requires a sample large and controlled
enough to measure the potential accuracy of its findings, Gust said that no
drug has ever been, nor will ever be approved on the basis of a single patient.

"There were fifteen who actually made it," said McMahon. "There were 2,000
applications and 57 of those applications were finally approved for
delivery. Fifteen of them were delivered."

McMahon said there are six former test subjects who still receive federal
marijuana.

"It was determined that the program was not going to be providing
scientifically valid information," Gust said.

The department has since shifted medical marijuana research to the private
sector.

Independent entities licensed to research potential medical applications of
marijuana are legally released by the DEA, allowing the researcher to
administer the illegal substance to test subjects.

"We created a new ad hoc kind of program," Gardett said. "We say the
research is good and the DEA releases (institute marijuana) from a legal
standpoint."

The ad hoc program was announced in 1999 and was started to create a
mechanism for providing research-grade marijuana to independently funded,
private-sector researchers.

"In the U.S., any drug that's not already approved for something, research
must be done to demonstrate its effectiveness," Gust said. "When there is
enough data generated, it's submitted to the FDA."

Marinol is a publicly available prescription drug that earned the FDA's
approval through this process. The active ingredient, Tetrahydrocannabinol,
is a derivative of marijuana known as THC.

Although THC is named specifically by the DEA as a schedule one substance -
considered the most highly addictive of all regulated substances with the
least legitimate medical applications - the liquid THC Marinol capsules
have recently been redefined as a schedule three substance allowing for its
commercial sale.

"Most of the research that (the institute) has supported has not been on
the medical applications of marijuana, but marijuana as a drug of abuse,"
Gust said. "It is something that would be more appropriately supported
(elsewhere)."

While the institute seems to be distancing itself from directly supplying
marijuana to test subjects, McMahon remains one of the anomalous six people
receiving marijuana from the government for purposes other than research.

Privately funded research has generated the test results necessary for the
Federal government approval to sell marijuana as medicine, at least for
Unimed, maker of Marinol.