Pubdate: Thu, 30 Apr 2015
Source: Boulder Weekly (CO)
Copyright: 2015 Boulder Weekly
Contact:  http://www.boulderweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/57
Author: Leland Rucker

COMMON SENSE OVER NONSENSE IN THE WEED WARS

I watched Dr. Sanjay Gupta's CNN Weed 3 special last week. It's 
another in his series about medical marijuana, and for the first time 
he is calling for national legalization. He also provides more 
fascinating evidence of how politics have stopped any meaningful 
study of medical cannabis here in the United States - and how public 
awareness and education might be finally changing that.

This one takes us through the case of researcher Sue Sisley, who has 
been long working with veterans returning from action with symptoms 
of post-traumatic stress disorder. She found many being treated with 
different prescriptions for various symptoms, often heavy narcotics, 
which she says left patients in a "zombie" state. Sisley, not a pot 
proselytizer, was surprised to find that some of her patients had 
stopped taking their prescription medicines like Lamotrigine and GHB 
and were instead self-medicating with marijuana - and getting better results.

She hooked up with Dr. Rick Doblin, a researcher from Harvard and 
founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 
who had been working with patients using medical marijuana. Like good 
doctors, they were encouraged by what they were seeing but wanted to 
study in better detail whether or not marijuana was actually what was 
helping these patients. They sought proof in the form of clinical 
trials and work that would be written up in peer-reviewed journals.

What they found was the catch-22 that has comprised the federal 
government's basic approach to cannabis research. Since it's a 
Schedule One drug, the U.S. has unilaterally opposed almost all study 
of marijuana's possible beneficial effects. All marijuana for studies 
has to be obtained through the government's single growing facility 
in Oxford, Miss., and research must be approved by the FDA, the DEA, 
the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Institute for Drug Abuse.

Not surprisingly, the Sisley/Doblin study was rejected in 2010. Gupta 
mentioned that rejection in his last special. Miraculously, their 
study was approved four days after the episode aired. Some months 
after that, Sisley was fired from her position at the University of 
Arizona, which claimed it had nothing to do with her marijuana 
research. Colorado chipped in $9 million of cannabis tax money, and 
today, Sisley and Doblin are ready to begin their research.

They will even have government product. When Gupta visited the 
government's Mississippi grow facility two years ago, it had produced 
46 pounds of cannabis for study that year. Today it is overflowing 
with more than 1,400 pounds of research-ready product for studies on 
medical marijuana, some of it bound for Sisley and Doblin as well as 
others studying epilepsy and cancer.

Surprisingly, both Nora Volkow, head of the National Institute for 
Drug Abuse and a vocal marijuana prohibitionist, and FDA director 
Douglas Throckmorton, both explain that the government is now serious 
about studying medical cannabis. President Barack Obama sits down 
long enough to tell Gupta that government must "follow the science."

Gupta also checks back in with Harvard researcher Staci Gruber, who 
recently ran a study that examined the brains of patients who never 
used marijuana and was able to track the changes after cannabis use. 
The most fascinating thing Gruber found was that there was no 
impairment of the brain after using cannabis, and she actually found 
an improvement in the anterior singular cortex, the part of the brain 
that affects decision-making, empathy and emotions. This finding begs 
for more study.

Gupta also grills U.S. senators Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and 
Rand Paul, who recently brought to the U.S. Senate a bill to end the 
federal prohibition on medical pot. Now in committees, it now has 13 
other co-sponsors. The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion, and 
Respect States (CARERS) Act would move it from Schedule 1 to Schedule 
2, which would allow for research without the threat of federal 
prosecution. "We are seeing a revolution of common sense and 
compassion," says Booker.

With this third special report, Gupta has become the most important 
voice for medical marijuana reform in the United States.

"Journalists shouldn't take a position. Objectivity is king," Gupta 
says. "But, at some point, open questions do get answered. At some 
point, contentious issues do get resolved. At some point, common 
sense prevails."

Let's hope he's right about all three of those things. Bring on the research.

You can hear Leland discuss his most recent column and Colorado 
cannabis issues each Thursday morning on KGNU. http://news.kgnu.org/weed
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom