URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v16/n547/a09.html
Newshawk: http://www.drugsense.org/donate.htm
Votes: 0
Pubdate: Sat, 13 Aug 2016
Source: Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette (Fayetteville, AR)
Copyright: 2016 Northwest Arkansas Newspapers LLC.
Contact: http://www.nwaonline.com/submit/letter/
Website: http://www.nwaonline.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/828
Note: Bloomberg View
THE MISSING CASE
The federal Drug Enforcement Administration has just issued a helpful reminder to all Americans. In denying a petition to loosen restrictions on marijuana, the agency repeated that the drug has “no currently accepted medical use” in the United States.
This may come as a surprise, given that some states already allow doctors to prescribe marijuana to treat maladies from PTSD to Alzheimer’s disease. Yet the truth is, research has yet to find firm evidence that marijuana can alleviate physical suffering.
That the political push for medicinal marijuana has gotten so far ahead of science explains why marijuana is still properly classified as a Schedule I controlled substance. It’s also why the Obama administration, in other big marijuana news this week, was right to enable more medical studies of the drug by increasing the supply available to researchers.
Marijuana research studies are properly controlled and monitored by both the DEA and the Food and Drug Administration. But they have also been limited more than necessary by a DEA rule that has authorized only the University of Mississippi to grow marijuana for research purposes. Other universities will now be licensed to grow marijuana, and that is expected to greatly expand the supply available for research.
Marijuana is already widely used as medicine in the United States. The more studies that can get underway, the sooner a confused public can learn with some empirical certainty whether its spread is for good or ill, and the sooner the science can catch up to the politics.
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom