Pubdate: Wed, 11 Jun 2014
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal (NV)
Copyright: 2014 Las Vegas Review-Journal
Contact: http://www.reviewjournal.com/about/print/press/letterstoeditor.html
Website: http://www.lvrj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/233
Author: Evan Halper, Tribune Washington Bureau
Page: 4

THERE'S AN OFFICIAL STASH OF MARIJUANA

OXFORD, Miss. - Walk along the narrow, brightly lit beige hallway, 
along the washed-out linoleum floor, around the corner to the 
imposing steel vault. As a scientist swings open the door, a 
familiar, overpowering scent wafts out.

Inside, marijuana buds are packed into thousands of baggies filed in 
bankers boxes. Fifty-pound barrels are brimming with dried, 
ready-to-smoke weed. Freezers are stocked with buckets of potent 
cannabis extracts. Large metal canisters sit, crammed full of 
hundreds of perfectly rolled joints.

The vault even has boxes of "marijuana trash" - contaminated garbage 
that a crafty pothead might try to steal for a cheap high.

It is one of the nation's most impressive stockpiles of marijuana - 
and probably the most controversial.

What makes the cannabis here on the campus of the University of 
Mississippi unique is that it is grown, processed and sold by the 
federal government. The stockpile represents the only source of pot 
allowed for researchers who want to conduct FDA-approved tests on 
using marijuana for medical purposes.

Researchers can't get anything from the 46-year-old Marijuana 
Research Project at Ole Miss unless the Drug Enforcement Agency gives 
the go-ahead. A panel on which the National Institute on Drug Abuse 
is represented often must sign off, too. Some prominent researchers 
complain approval is unreasonably tough for scientists whose work 
aims to find beneficial uses for the drug.

That has made Mahmoud ElSohly, the scientist who heads the team here, 
a favorite boogeyman for legalization activists and some researchers.

"It is a bizarre situation," said Orrin Devinsky, director of the 
Comprehensive Epilepsy Center at NYU Langone Medical Center. "The DEA 
is acting like this is 1935 and cannabis is this extremely dangerous 
substance."

Indeed, under federal law, the government classifies marijuana as a 
more dangerous substance than cocaine, one that has no medical use, 
even as consumers in 21 states and the District of Columbia can 
legally light up. The DEA guards the stockpile here as if it were plutonium.

Devinsky, for example, is pursuing research involving a chemical in 
marijuana, known as CBD, which has recently shown promise in 
suppressing certain types of seizures. The storage vault here 
contains marijuana with high levels of the substance. But physicians 
can't easily get at it - nor can their patients, Devinsky said

Meanwhile, patients in states with dispensaries can walk up to a 
counter and buy pot, but with no good information about whether it 
includes a lot of CBD or a little.

ElSohly is currently ramping operations back up at the 12-acre farm 
here, which budget cuts have forced him to keep fallow since 2007. He 
is laying the groundwork to grow 30,000 plants. As he does, he finds 
himself accused of colluding with the DEA to maintain a monopoly.

But ElSohly, an Egyptian immigrant who has been in charge since 1980, 
is not so much a collaborator as a scientist stuck in a time warp. He 
is caught between marijuana researchers and a government agency that 
remains deeply suspicious of marijuana use even as it controls the 
million-dollar contract that funds his project.

Just before taking visitors on a tour of an indoor grow room, where 
he will roll the buds from mature pot plants between his fingers and 
declare "I love it" as he talks of the rich fragrance, ElSohly 
ponders the possibility that it will all come to an end as 
legalization gains momentum.

"I could lose it," ElSohly said of his contract. "But so what? It 
would be just another research project that is terminated. I could 
start another.

"Maybe if it becomes legalized, we could start producing high-quality 
materials for a pharmaceutical product." Then, he clarifies. "The 
liberalization of those laws really scares me," he says. "To have 
marijuana available just like that? I feel sorry for Colorado and 
Washington state. In a few years, you are really going to see the 
impact of the liberal laws they have there."

Unlike other cannabis researchers, ElSohly says pot should never be 
smoked. You do that for a high, he said, and there are ways to move 
the curative chemicals into your system without getting stoned.

For years, he has been trying to get approval to market a 
suppository. THC, the component of pot that makes people high, is 
"not absorbed through the rectum," he says.

Business proposals like that have been a point of concern for 
critics, who accuse ElSohly of exploiting his insider status for 
profit and failing to recognize that many patients will never be able 
to afford cannabis in the forms he promotes.

The scientist notes that he has to jump through the same hoops as 
every other researcher to get trials approved. He doesn't dare bend 
the rules, he says, since his contract depends on the DEA, and other 
institutions are eager to have it.

In 2007, a DEA administrative law judge ruled that the University of 
Massachusetts, too, should be permitted to grow pot for research. Top 
officials at the DEA overruled her.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom