FDA BILL SUPPORT

In testimony before Congress this past July, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said that the Bush administration has an adversarial relationship with science: "Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is often ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Carmona said. "The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds."

Last year, the FDA put out a fabricated political press release claiming that "no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana for treatment in the United States."

A wide-ranging 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency, actually did show medical benefits from smoked marijuana while also finding minimal harmful side effects. That review found marijuana to be "moderately well suited for particular conditions, such as chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting and AIDS wasting. The IOM findings support a petition to the DEA demanding the FDA to reclassify marijuana from a Schedule I drug (like cocaine and heroin) to a lower classification consistent with its therapeutic potential and relative harmlessness.

By definition, all Schedule I drugs must have a "high potential for abuse" and "no currently accepted medical use in treatment." In contrast, the IOM report found that "few marijuana users develop dependence," and called the drug's withdrawal symptoms "mild and short-lived," summarizing, "Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."

The FDA press release was right in one respect: There have been no conclusive studies since 1999. But there's a good reason for that: The federal government will not allow them.

A University of Massachusetts-Amherst professor, horticulturist Lyle Craker, has waged battle for over six-years to convince the government to let him grow marijuana for medical research. Craker is challenging the government's monopoly on research marijuana. A lab at the University of Mississippi is the government's only marijuana growing facility. Craker's suit claimed that government-grown marijuana lacks the potency medical researchers need to make important breakthroughs.

Earlier this year, a DEA administrative law judge recommended that the DEA grant Craker's application to grow marijuana in bulk for use by scientists in Food and Drug Administration-approved research. Mary Ellen Bittner's non binding ruling said the government's supply was inadequate for medical research. It also concluded Craker's request was in the "public interest."

During December of 2000 (as a two-paragraph provision buried in an appropriations bill), the United States' Congress enacted the Data Quality Act (DQA) primarily in response to increased use of the internet, which gives agencies the ability to communicate information easily and quickly to a large audience. Under the DQA, federal agencies must ensure that the information it disseminates meets certain quality standards. Congress' intent was to prevent the harm that can occur when government web sites, which are easily and often accessed by the public, disseminate inaccurate information.

Considering the conclusions drawn by the 1999 Institute of Medicine's Report, Marijuana as Medicine: Assessing the Science Base, the DEA website appears to be misleading and biased, containing half-truths and duplicity, without mention about alternatives to smoked marijuana--edibles, tincture, and vaporization for instance.

Considering Dr. Tashkin's recent study finding "Marijuana Smoking Does Not Cause Lung Cancer, it actually is found to be protective against lung cancer" (funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse and released well over one year ago), vaporizing techniques and edibles as alternatives to smoking marijuana, and the availability of FDA approved "Marinol" (synthetic THC in a pill), it becomes apparent that the DEA's conclusions are politically motivated and scientifically unsupportable. The DEA's website still clearly states: "Smoked marijuana has been shown to cause a variety of health problems, including cancer."

To place a law enforcement agency in charge of public health decisions is a direct threat to the public health of the nation and in particular those that require the option of using cannabis therapeutically under medical supervision and abiding by state law. The DEA agenda, and the lack of forthright communication in their web pages, and failure to comply with the standards of the Data Quality Act, makes them an unreliable source of information concerning medical marijuana.