Pubdate: Thu, 15 Oct 2015
Source: Tucson Weekly (AZ)
Copyright: 2015 Tucson Weekly
Contact:  http://www.tucsonweekly.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/462
Authors: Jayson Chesley and Alexa Ard
Note: This is from a continuing series from America's Weed Rush, an 
investigation of marijuana legalization in America, a 2015 project of 
the Carnegie-Knight News21 program produced by the nation's top 
journalism students and graduates.

News21: America's Weed Rush

Part 2: GOVERNMENT FUNDING, LACK OF RESTRICTIONS SLOW PROGRESS ON 
MEDICAL MARIJUANA RESEARCH

Responding to questions about research spending, Mahmoud ElSohly, the 
director of NIDA's marijuana program, said that NIDA's job is to fund 
abuse and addiction research and that other NIH branches should be 
funding other kinds of research.

"It's not that NIDA would take it upon itself to investigate the 
medical aspects of cannabis," ElSohly said. "It's not the charge of 
NIDA. It's the charge of other institutes within the NIH to 
investigate the use of cannabis."

But the other parts of the NIH have not funded much marijuana 
research. A National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke 
(NINDS) spokesperson said that most NIH grants were based on what 
peer reviewers thought was the most promising science.

The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), for example, has 
spent just $48 million on medical marijuana research despite states 
approving it to treat PTSD. Yet the NIMH gave grants totaling $91 
million for ketamine research -largely to treat depression -and 
almost $120 million for amphetamine research -largely to treat 
attention disorders.

Similarly, despite several states' approval of marijuana and 
cannabinoids to treat epileptic seizures, NINDS spent just $38 
million through 2014 researching the potential effects of marijuana, 
compared to almost $100 million spent on opiate research, largely to 
treat different kinds of pain. Researchers said that number is 
expected to increase this year as more work is done on cannabidiol 
(CBD) -a major cannabinoid in marijuana that doesn't have 
psychoactive effects -and seizures.

Schedule 1

In 1970, Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which 
created one piece of federal law classifying all drugs. The law 
organized drugs into schedules based on their potential for abuse, 
status in international treaties and medical benefits.

Marijuana was temporarily designated as Schedule 1, but President 
Richard Nixon created a commission to do a review of the drug to 
determine if it should keep the most restrictive scheduling. The 
commission's findings from research projects and public polls made up 
almost 4,000 pages of reports and technical papers published in four 
volumes in 1972. It concluded that marijuana should not be 
criminalized and suggested rescheduling the drug. But Nixon decided otherwise.

One hundred and sixty substances have been removed, added or 
transferred from one schedule to another since the CSA went into effect.

Investigators working with Schedule 1 drugs need an additional level 
of clearance from the DEA, also created during the Nixon 
administration to enforce the laws of the CSA, and to regulate the 
use of controlled substances. Wallace, the doctor at UCSD, cited five 
separate state and federal groups that sent him requests before he 
received approval for his research on how different doses of 
marijuana might be used to treat pain.

If marijuana were to be classified as a Schedule 2 drug, which would 
mean it has a federally accepted medical use, researchers would no 
longer need Schedule 1 clearance from the DEA to work with it.

"The Schedule 1 designation makes it challenging," Wallace said. "I 
think if they move it to Schedule 2, it's going to get a lot easier 
to research."

That change is easier said than done, according to Matthew Barden, a 
DEA spokesman.

"A lot of people in the marijuana debate say to just put it under a 
different schedule, but in order to do that the FDA would have to 
change everything..." Barden said. "So we, the DEA, can't just put 
something in Schedule 2. That would be a violation of how things are 
scheduled."

Rescheduling can be done two different ways -by congressional action 
or administrative action. A few different bills have been proposed in 
Congress to give marijuana a different classification, but they've 
always died in committee.

The administrative route involves more steps and more agencies. To 
get the ball rolling, a petition must be filed by an interested 
outside party or the secretary of health and human services. The 
attorney general reviews the petition, and then forwards it back to 
the secretary of HHS to request scientific and medical evaluation by the FDA.

Findings and recommendations from HHS are reported to the attorney 
general, who then makes the decision whether to proceed with 
rulemaking after reviewing the evidence, which it will often do in 
consultation with the DEA. The DEA and FDA have the power to deny the 
petition if there is not sufficient scientific and medical evidence. 
If the attorney general can go forward with the rulemaking process, 
then the White House will decide if the rule could have economic 
effects or raises important policy issues.

Applying to research

Even when researchers are cleared to do federally funded marijuana 
research, they must obtain marijuana from a farm at the University of 
Mississippi, which operates with the authority of NIDA. The farm is 
located at the National Center for Natural Products Research, nestled 
in the eastern portion of the 640-acre Ole Miss campus, just steps 
away from the stadium where the Rebels play football.

The heavily secured farm is surrounded by fencing, guards in towers 
and lock vaults. The sprawling 12-acre, outdoor marijuana farm and 
growing room is the only federally sanctioned marijuana grow in the country.

"The National Institute on Drug Abuse is the only agency that is 
allowed under the federal law ... to actually be in charge of the 
manufacturing and distribution of cannabis for any purpose," ElSohly said.

HHS removed the mandatory public health services review from the 
marijuana research approval process to reduce the number of approval 
steps for marijuana research.

Parents campaigning for a form of CBD to treat their children's 
seizures have already made strides in attracting public attention to 
marijuana research. Vanderah said that research and treatments with 
CBD should pave the way for future research because it proves that 
marijuana-based medicine can really work.

"If you have your own child that's having 100 seizures per day and 
then they take some of this and it stops, you'll look at it very 
differently," Vanderah said. "They look at it as a medication, 
instead of how we always think of something like marijuana."

Wallace, Vanderah and Schultz predicted future development in areas 
like multiple sclerosis, dementia, Lou Gehrig's disease and neonatal 
hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (NHIE), a condition that cuts the 
flow of oxygen in infants. To treat such a wide variety of 
conditions, researchers are going to have to look at marijuana in 
many different ways -not just the extracts that companies like GW 
work with, Wallace said.

"I think what we're going to find is a wide range of patient 
preferences, so we can't think that we can just do away with the leaf 
and just extract it," Wallace said. "It needs to be available in a 
wide range of products."

This is from a continuing series from America's Weed Rush, an 
investigation of marijuana legalization in America, a 2015 project of 
the Carnegie-Knight News21 program produced by the nation's top 
journalism students and graduates.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom