Why Don’t We Know More About Medical Marijuana?

Might Cannabis be the miracle plant that so many people are saying it is? Looking at the lists of benefits and potential benefits it is tempting to believe that it is. And medical researchers have just scratched the surface; only a few of the 113 compounds have been considered. Many others might prove beneficial. So why don’t we know more about the medical uses of marijuana?

The federal government makes it difficult for researchers to investigate just how miraculous this plant might be. In a letter¹ to the journal Science, concerned researchers laid out some of the difficulties and roadblocks the fed has created to obstruct legitimate medical exploration into the therapeutic potential of Cannabis sativa. Researchers must first suffer “a lengthy and arduous application process, often lasting for years.” And that is just the beginning. Potential researchers are further frustrated by the feds sourcing restrictions. From a 2017 report² by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine:

In the United States, cannabis for research purposes is available only through the NIDA Drug Supply Program (NIDA, 2016a). The mission of NIDA is to “advance science on the causes and consequences of drug use and addiction and to apply that knowledge to improve individual and public health,” rather than to pursue or support research into the potential therapeutic uses of cannabis or any other drugs (NIDA, 2016b). As a result of this emphasis, less than one-fifth of cannabinoid research funded by NIDA in fiscal year 2015 concerns the therapeutic properties of cannabinoids (NIDA, 2016c).16 Because NIDA funded the majority of all the National Institutes of Health (NIH)-sponsored cannabinoid research in fiscal year 2015 (NIDA, 2016c),17 its focus on the consequences of drug use and addiction constitutes an impediment to research on the potential beneficial health effects of cannabis and cannabinoids.

Consider the Source

All of the cannabis that NIDA provides to investigators is sourced from the University of Mississippi, which is currently the sole cultivator of the plant material and has been since 1968 (NIDA, 1998, 2016a).18 In the past, the varieties of cannabis that were available to investigators through NIDA were limited in scope and were not of comparable potency to what patients could obtain at their dispensaries (Stith and Vigil, 2016). Because of restrictions on production and vicissitudes in supply and demand, federally produced cannabis may have been harvested years earlier, is stored in a freezer (a process that may affect the quality of the product) (Taschwer and Schmid, 2015; Thomas and Pollard, 2016), and often has a lower potency than cannabis sold in state-regulated markets (Reardon, 2015; Stith and Vigil, 2016).

Why the hoops? Cannabis is classified as a Schedule I substance. This classification is the rationalization the federal government uses for restricting clinical study.

According to the United States Drug Enforcement Authority:

Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are:

heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote

By contrast, Schedule II substances have the same potential for abuse and dependence but are deemed to have a medical benefit. These include the narcotic substances hydromorphone (Dilaudid), methadone (Dolophine), meperidine (Demerol), oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet), and fentanyl (Sublimaze, Duragesic). If you are following the current epidemic of addiction and overdose deaths from prescription painkillers (opioids), some of those drug names will be familiar to you.

So, given the current evidence concerning the curative potential of Cannabis, why is the federal government so reticent to abolish its archaic marijuana laws? Why isn’t medical marijuana universally available both for treatment and for study? I will explore that in the next post,