How the Federal Government Slows Marijuana Research

Medical marijuana bottled for patients in Los Angeles.1 April 2014 Cannabis Lab Post pict-5Medical marijuana bottled for patients in Los Angeles.Credit Frederic J. Brown/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Politicians who don’t want to take a clear position on marijuana legalization often say more research is needed on the effects of consuming the drug. Hillary Clinton called for more research just last month on CNN.

While existing scientific evidence shows that marijuana is less addictive and harmful than alcohol and tobacco, more research would be welcome and useful to the country. But what most politicians don’t acknowledge is that the federal government has made it incredibly hard to perform this research. Researchers have to go through a cumbersome process to obtain approval from multiple federal agencies before they are allowed to obtain and study the drug. Often their requests are denied and some researchers have had to sue the government before their projects were cleared.

In addition to the Food and Drug Administration, which has to approve all clinical trials, researchers studying marijuana also have to obtain approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which controls the country’s only legal source for research-grade marijuana. Independent researchers who are not funded by the National Institutes of Health also have to obtain approval from a Department of Health and Human Services scientific review panel.

The drug abuse institute says that it has funded and provided marijuana to researchers looking into the therapeutic benefits of the various chemicals found in the plant, and that it had 28 active grants in this area as of January. But it is far less charitable about providing marijuana to researchers who are independently funded. It has agreed to provide the drug to just 16 such projects since 1999.

One researcher, Lyle E. Craker a professor at the University of Massachusetts, grew so frustrated with the delays in getting access to marijuana that he sought to grow his own plants. But the Drug Enforcement Administration refused to grant him a license and a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the D.E.A. last year.

A big part of the problem is that marijuana is listed in the restrictive Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act along with much more dangerous drugs such as heroin and LSD. The law says Schedule I drugs have “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” It is no wonder then that the American College of Physicians said in 2008 that marijuana’s inclusion in Schedule I “raises significant concerns for researchers, physicians, and patients” and urged “an evidence-based review of marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance to determine whether it should be reclassified.”

If politicians are serious when they call for more research on marijuana, they should also push for sensible laws that would make it easier for scholars to study the plant and its various chemical compounds.