Change We Can Believe In? Not for Medical Marijuana Research

by Paul Armentano

It was nearly two years ago that the Obama White House issued its "Scientific Integrity" memorandum stating, "Science and the scientific process must inform and guide decisions of my Administration."

Those of us involved in marijuana law reform welcomed the memo -- which came just months after the American Medical Association called for "facilitating ... clinical research and [the] development of cannabinoid-based medicines" -- and we hoped that it would stimulate the commencement of long-overdue human studies into the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis.

Those hopes were snuffed, however, when a representative from the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the agency that oversees 85 percent of the world's research on controlled substances, reaffirmed its longstanding "no medi-pot" policy to The New York Times. "As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use," a spokesperson told the paper in 2010. "We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana."

A review of the U.S. National Institute of Health website clinicaltrials.gov shows that NIDA's kibosh on medical marijuana trials continues unabated. Though an online search of ongoing FDA-approved clinical trials using the keyword "cannabinoids" (the active components in marijuana) yielded me 65 worldwide hits, only six involved subjects's use of actual cannabis. (The others involved the use of synthetic cannabinoid agonists like dronabinol or nabilone, the commercially marketed marijuana extract Sativex, or the cannabinoid receptor blocking agent Rimonabant).

Of the six, two of the studies have already been completed: "Opioid and Cannabinoid Pharmacokinetic Interactions" and "Vaporization as a Smokeless Cannabis Delivery System," both of which were spearheaded by researchers (primarily Dr. Donald Abrams) at the University of California at San Francisco.

The four remaining studies are still in the "recruitment" phase. Of these, only two pertain to the potential medical use of cannabis: "Cannabis for Spasticity of Multiple Sclerosis," which is taking place at the University of California at Davis and is likely the final clinical trial associated with the soon-to-be-defunct and defunded California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research and "Cannabis for Inflammatory Bowel Disease," led by researchers at the Meir Medical Center in Israel.

Of the remaining studies, one focuses on the detection of cannabinoids and their metabolites on drug screens, while the other, entitled "Effects of Smoked Marijuana on Risk Taking and Decision Making Tasks," seeks to establish pot-related harms, hypothesizing that subjects "demonstrate poorer decision-making abilities and increased risk-taking behaviors" after smoking marijuana.

So much for the AMA's demand for clinical cannabis research.

By contrast, preclinical (animal) trials assessing the therapeutic efficacy of cannabinoids are occurring at a record pace. A keyword search on the search engine PubMed using the term "cannabinoids" yielded over 1,300 published papers in 2008, some 1,700 papers in 2009 and another 1,200 published last year.

While many of these studies highlight the ability of cannabinoids to manage a wide range of symptoms, even more intriguing are the results indicating the potential of cannabinoid intervention to halt the development of serious diseases, such as cancer, diabetes, Lou Gehrig's disease and multiple sclerosis. Nevertheless, without abrupt changes at the highest levels of government -- changes that do not appear to be forthcoming despite this administration's public demand for "scientific integrity" -- scientists will indefinitely lack the human follow-up data necessary to adequately answer societal questions regarding cannabis safety, efficacy and proper dosage.

"Change we can believe in?" Not when it comes to studying pot.

Source: The Huffington Post

NEWS: Groundbreaking marijuana policy spearheaded by UW student

Marijuana has long been classified as a dangerous drug with no medical benefits. But thanks in part to the work of a University of Washington medical student, a major medical association this week urged the federal government to reconsider.

"It's a huge shift on medical ideology," said Sunil Aggarwal, who's been studying the medical uses of marijuana for 10 years. "It's something I've been dreaming of since I was an undergraduate and found out that marijuana wasn't a horribly dangerous thing."

Since 1997, the American Medical Association has taken a hard line against the drug, endorsing its classification as a Schedule 1 controlled substance -- the most restrictive category -- and asserting its lack of medical value. Aggarwal's research, published in his dissertation and in two articles in the Journal of Opioid Management -- helped convince AMA members that the drug has potential.

At its annual meeting Tuesday, the country's largest physicians' organization adopted a policy that urges the federal government to reclassify, or "reschedule," the drug.

And cannabis activists cheered.

"It's like part of the Berlin Wall coming down," said Vivian McPeak, founder of Seattle Hempfest -- the largest pot rally in the nation -- and one of 400,000 people nationwide authorized to use medical marijuana.

"For the longest time, those of us working for medical marijuana have been hearing this argument that none of the medical organizations or establishments have supported medical marijuana. With the AMA now doing pretty much an about face, who's going to be able to say that?"

Aggarwal's path to the 250,000-member organization began last spring, when the UW chapter of the medical student section of the AMA endorsed his resolution to reschedule the drug. After he got it through a national meeting of the student section that June, he presented the idea and his research to the AMA's 2008 annual meeting, where the organization agreed to study the issue for a year.

Aggarwal served as expert reviewer of the groundbreaking report released Tuesday.

His only complaint? The AMA should have gone farther.

The report drafted by the AMA's Council on Science and Public Health asks for a "review" of marijuana's classification but neither demands the government reschedule the drug nor emphasizes the need Aggarwal believes hundreds of thousands of patients have for the drug's medicinal properties.

"I tried as best as I could to make the language stronger than it was, but that was as far as it was going," Aggarwal said. "But I realized that even at that level, it would still be a big shift."

And not just for the medical community. Speaking at Hempfest last year, Aggarwal urged the crowd not to feel like criminals.

"We have to change the way people think about people and cannabis," he told the crowd. "This is a staple of the earth and a basic medicine for a lot of people."

The government hasn't shown any sign of following the AMA's suggestion just yet, though it's hardly the first organization to call for change. Last year, the American College of Physicians also urged the government to reconsider marijuana.

Aggarwal, who expects to stay in what he calls the now "exploding" field of cannabinoid science after he graduates in June, is sure change is coming.

"I'm pretty happy," he said. "This Schedule 1 thing is going to be a thing of the past."

Source: Seattle PI