Pubdate: Sun, 21 Oct 2001
Source: Cannabis Culture Online (Web)
Copyright: 2001 Cannabis Culture
Contact:  http://www.mapinc.org/media/514
Website: http://www.cannabisculture.com/
Author: Pete Brady
Note: MAP posted as an exception to our web source policies.
Cited: The International Cannabinoid Research Society 
http://www.cannabinoidsociety.org
National Institute on Drug Abuse http://www.nida.nih.gov/

INTERNATIONAL CANNABINOID RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Brain Power, Cutting-Edge Science And Political Conflict At The 10th Annual 
Cannabinoid Research Convention.

I walked into a cavernous meeting room at a hotel in Baltimore and 
encountered the biggest collection of brainy brain researchers that I had 
ever witnessed. Cerebral cortexes were literally throbbing with talk of 
endocannabinoid systems, custom-built experimental mice, receptor 
sequestration, hippocampuses, amygdalas, and whether there would be enough 
potent coffee to keep everybody awake during three days of formal and 
informal presentations, symposiums and panel discussions.

Underneath the technowords and chemistry equations, the ICRS conference was 
basically about marijuana - what can be derived from it, how those 
derivatives (called cannabinoids) affect the body at a cellular and 
systemic level, how the body's reaction to cannabinoids can be used to 
decode its reaction to disease and other drugs, how cannabinoids can be 
manipulated and reconfigured to achieve medical and research goals.

The tenth annual ICRS meeting cast of characters included legendary 
cannabinoid researchers such as Dr Raphael Mechoulam, the US government's 
marijuana farm boss Dr Mahmoud ElSohly, and maverick physician-businessmen 
like GW Pharmaceuticals' Dr Geoffrey Guy.

The scene was surreal, politically charged, and slightly intimidating. Most 
American cannabinoid researchers are funded by the National Institute of 
Health, the National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), other government 
agencies, and pharmaceutical companies. Few of these funding sources are 
friendly to smoked marijuana or the marijuana legalization movement, and as 
I was to find out later, some officials representing NIDA are openly 
hostile to whole marijuana and those who believe that individual citizens 
should be able to do high level cannabinoid research in the privacy of 
their own brains.

Still, Dr Mechoulam listened patiently with apparent interest as grow guru 
Ed Rosenthal talked about marijuana varieties and offered him a copy of The 
New Prescription, Marijuana as Medicine, a new book published by 
Rosenthal's Quick Trading publishing company.

Dr Guy, a treating physician, pharmaceutical products developer, and 
British pot greenhouse sponsor, found himself discussing rat brain slices 
and marijuana cultivation techniques with doctoral candidates.

Some NIDA representatives, who rudely refused to let me interview them or 
write down their names (they claimed their handlers in Washington DC 
prohibited them from speaking to journalists), found themselves confronted 
by Jeff Jones, the boy wonder head of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers 
Cooperative (OCBC), who told them that their "abuse" paradigm was 
unscientific and harmful, especially to patients that Jones' OCBC tries so 
hard to assist by providing high quality medical grade whole marijuana, 
derivative products, and harm reduction devices.

ICRS treasurer Dr Richard Musty stood with Scottish researcher Dr Roger 
Pertwee and ICRS Administrative Director Diane Mahadeen, talking about 
neurotransmitters, absent colleagues, and whether the host hotel would be 
able to handle the conference's seating and feeding requirements.

A bevy of international researcher-babes, consisting of beautiful, bright, 
young female cannabinoid researchers, provided grace notes to the 
gathering, which otherwise would have been dominated by receding hairlines 
and graying hair of the senior geniuses who have been researching 
cannabinoids since the 1960's.

Image and Reality

The ICRS is an eclectic organization. Its scientists and researchers are 
extremely well qualified academically and professionally, but instead of 
doing mainstream pharmaceutical, behavioral or physiological research, they 
study cannabinoids. This means they fight an image problem because 
cannabinoids come from marijuana.

Publicly, they present themselves as straights, no different from other 
scientists. They're offended when peers, corporations, media or government 
agencies view their specialization as "Cheech and Chong" research. Musty 
recalled occasions when ICRS had trouble booking potential conference 
sites, for example, because hotel reps didn't want a "cannabis conference" 
at their facility.

Behind the straight arrow facade, however, I found many ICRS members are 
closet radicals, iconoclasts, pioneers. Some of them even smoke marijuana! 
They are a small cabal, interested in constituents of a plant that has been 
slandered and persecuted for 70 years. They have heard drug czars and other 
prohibitionists describe cannabis as an evil weed with no medical efficacy. 
They have seen pharmaceutical companies and doctors, who had cannabis 
extracts in their pharmacopoeia as recently as the 1970's, gradually move 
away from cannabinoids in favor of totally artificial drugs.

Now, ICRS members are feeling vindicated, as more and more scientists and 
capitalists are acknowledging that cannabinoids, even derived from raw 
plant materials, are a fascinating, useful and potentially profitable 
source of substances with an almost infinite variety of medical and 
research applications.

It's been a long road. Cannabinoid research began in the 1940's, when an 
American isolated CBD, CBN and THC from plant materials. The next big 
breakthrough was courtesy of Dr Mechoulam's lab in Israel in 1964, where 
Mechoulam first detailed the exact chemical structure of THC.

In the 1970's and 80's, pharmaceutical companies and researchers 
concentrated on creating synthetic substances that mimicked cannabinoids, 
but the most important discovery came in 1988 when Allyn Howlett and Bill 
Devane discovered the existence of cannabinoid receptors in the brain. In 
1992, Devane was again instrumental in another big breakthrough: he and 
Mechoulam discovered that the body manufactures its own endogenous 
cannabinoid, arachidonylehtnaolamide, which they dubbed anandamide, from 
the Sanskrit word for bliss.

By the mid-90's, researchers had cloned cannabinoid receptors, designed 
substances that prevent cannabinoids from acting on receptors, and 
established that cannabinoids and the cannabinoid systems influence 
virtually every major neurotransmitter function in the body. From mood to 
muscle tone, from anxiety to appetite, cannabinoid systems are integral to 
an organism's core functions.

According to Dr Richard Musty, cannabinoid scientists began networking in 
the 1970's. In the mid-80's, Musty got together with two other 
cannabinoidists to plan a formal conference in Melbourne, Australia which 
took place in 1987. Later, the widely respected Virginia-based scientist, 
Dr Billy Martin, formed the International Cannabinoid Study Group, which 
met in Virginia and more exotic locales, like Crete.

In 1991, Martin, Musty and a few other dedicated networkers chartered the 
ICRS; by 1992, the organization was growing in stature. It has increased 
its membership every year since 1991, and has had yearly conferences in 
Cape Cod, Acapulco, France, Montreal, and other beautiful locations.

The Politics of Science

Much of this year's ICRS conference consisted of oral presentations in a 
large darkened meeting room. Every afternoon, however, researchers 
conducted "poster sessions" during which posters were pinned on mobile 
walls in the hallways, with research authors explaining or arguing about 
what they had studied.

About 60% of what I heard at these sessions was too technical for me. My 
lack of comprehension was compounded by the fact that whenever I joined an 
audience containing NIDA reps at a poster session, the NIDAites would 
quickly move away. I wondered if I had bad breath. When I confided my fears 
to a senior scientist, he said, "Have you noticed that you are the only 
journalist here? This group isn't very eager for publicity."

Some researchers were kind enough to tell me what they were talking about. 
Emmanuel Onaivi, a Vanderbilt University researcher and African national 
who is also affiliated with NIDA, said his research indicates that genetic 
differences based on ethnicity might create different types of CB1 receptors.

"The expression of the receptors, which is gene-modulated, has mutated 
among different groups," he said. "There may be differences in how one 
group's receptors react to cannabinoids. These differences might explain 
why some people are more prone to abuse than others, or why different 
people experience cannabinoids in idiosyncratic ways."

A few posters away, a handsome 27-year-old doctoral candidate named Jason 
Schechter told a group of people what he does to rats.

"We inject substances into rats that create two acute pain states," he 
explained. "One state makes normally painful stimuli even more painful. 
Another state, called allodynia, makes skin so sensitive that in humans 
people cannot even wear clothing. I administered HU210, a cannabinoid 
agonist that is 500 times more potent than THC. It completely got rid of 
both these conditions. Dr Gabriel Nahas [the infamous anti-marijuana 
scientist] says cannabinoids have no pain-relieving effects. But I had a 
discourse with him about this, and he had little to challenge me with."

Publicity Shy

Many people looked forward to the Friday lunch session because NIDA head 
Alan Leshner was scheduled to speak.

Leshner and NIDA are controversial. Cannabinoid researchers take NIDA's 
money, but many wish they didn't have to. Privately, some admitted that 
NIDA money automatically skews research proposals and outcomes. Dr Donald 
Abrams, a San Francisco AIDS researcher who recently completed a clinical 
trial involving cannabis, makes no attempt to hide his opinion that NIDA 
interferes with expedient approval and facilitation of marijuana research.

When Leshner strolled into the hallway toward the main conference room, he 
was surrounded by well-wishers, but was also met by Dr Tod Mikuriya, the 
courageous California pot doctor who has been recommending marijuana to 
patients for 20 years. Mikuriya tried to engage Leshner in a dialogue about 
compassion, science and law enforcement. Leshner stood mutely with a smile 
frozen on his face.

During Leshner's 40-minute speech, it became apparent why he'd shut 
Mikuriya down. The NIDA head, a former acting director of the National 
Institute of Mental Health who has studied the biological basis for human 
behavior, stunned us by reciting reefer madness propaganda.

In regards to medical marijuana, he intoned that NIDA was going to "replace 
anecdote with science." He also claimed marijuana was addictive, and then 
moved on to what really seemed to excite him: NIDA's new public school 
propaganda package, in which children are lied to about marijuana under the 
guise of a program designed to encourage them to enjoy science!

When I tried to take a picture of Leshner, he barked at me to stop.

As he made his way out of the building after his speech, I asked him to 
explain his comments about marijuana.

"You really believe marijuana is addictive?" I asked.

"Of course it is, no doubt about it, absolutely," he responded, trying to 
move past me.

"What evidence do you have to support that?"

"Look," he said, side-stepping so he could get out the door, "I've had to 
answer these questions 20,000 times. I don't need to answer you. I'm tired 
of these questions. Look at our website. Goodbye."

A Jones for Real Bud

As the conference drew to a close, OCBC's Jeff Jones pulled off a major coup.

To my knowledge, all the other presenters had been scientists or doctoral 
candidates. Somehow, Jones, who has no advanced degree or science 
background, got permission to give one of the last presentations of the 
conference.

He was dressed in a suit as he strode to the front of the packed meeting 
room. Only one other researcher, from Holland, ironically, was on deck, and 
then it was on to the closing banquet.

Jones carried a small wooden case with him. He opened it and produced an 
odd contraption: a high-tech vaporizer, powered by a heat gun. Jones had 
demonstrated it in Rosenthal's room. It was definitely a harm reduction 
device that eliminated particulates and tars the government seems so 
worried about, while allowing a healthy cannabinoid profile to shine through.

Announcing himself as the director of a medical marijuana club, Jones 
demonstrated the device the best he could, although the bowl was empty.

Midway through his presentation, several female NIDA bureaucrats got up 
loudly from their chairs near the front of the room, gathered their 
belongings, and stormed out.

Dr Mikuriya, who earlier that afternoon made his own presentation, during 
which he shocked the audience by saying marijuana's status should be reset 
to the way it was before 1937, urged me to ask the women what they objected to.

The trio were talking in hushed, disparaging tones when I approached them. 
When they saw me coming, they covered their nametags and said they didn't 
want to talk to me.

"Did you have some objection to Mr Jones's device?" I asked.

"We don't have to talk to you," a portly woman said. "We're government 
employees. Get away."

Reflecting on the incident later, Jones pretty much summed up how I felt 
about the entire conference.

"There are obviously a lot of talented, dedicated and sharp people here," 
he said. "Almost all of them were cool, open-minded and professional. I was 
impressed by how much they know and how creative they are in their 
research. But there's a disconnect between what they know and what I know. 
NIDA is hung up on the abuse angle. They don't realize or care that people 
all over the world enjoy the plant and use it to make them feel better. My 
clients don't need somebody to tell them which receptor site mediates that 
feeling. I think ICRS should put the cannabis back into cannabinoids."