US Government will sell pot for research

Feds to provide pot for medical studies, but it’s all bunkweed

By Dana Larsen

The US government has announced they will loosen key restrictions on the use of marijuana for scientific research. The new rules, announced on May 21 and coming into force this December, will empower the National Institute on Drug Abuse to sell marijuana to any privately funded scientists whose research proposals have been approved.

Previously, marijuana was virtually impossible to acquire for research, as it could only be given to scientists who had a federal grant to access it. Only three such grants have ever been given out. Now, any group with an approved study and independent funding can have access to federal marijuana.

The New York Times quoted Mike Nevin, a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, as saying "This news gives us great hope." In 1998 his board allocated $500,000 towards studying marijuana’s benefits for cancer and AIDS patients. "We are hoping the federal government will grant us the ability to do this study," he said, "and we are willing to pay."
See
The New York Times Reveals The New Medical Marijuana Research Policy
Is Just A Stalling Tactic That Will Do Nothing To Help Patients,
While The Washington Post Reveals That Frankly It Doesn’t Give A Damn.
– One and A Fraction Articles

Currently, all federal marijuana in the US is grown under contract to NIDA by the University of Mississippi. The University grows 1.8 acres at a secret site every second year.

However, NIDA announced it is now seeking "proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to grow, harvest, extract, analyse, store and manufacture marijuana cigarettes, and distribute cannabis, and marijuana cigarettes to NIH grantees and other researchers to support basic and clinical research."

Hopefully they’ll find someone who can grow better pot than the University of Mississippi. The same day the feds made their announcement, California NORML released the results of tests they had sponsored at DEA-licensed laboratories, analyzing the feds’ Mississippi-grown bud and comparing it with bud from various Californian medical-pot clubs.

The NORML study found that federal pot was by far the least potent tested, with THC levels of less than 4%, compared to a range of 12.8% to 15.4% THC in club-bought bud. Further, the federal pot had only negligible levels of CBD, which is known to relieve muscle spasms and has other unique medicinal properties.

(Marijuananews note: These THC levels cannot be translated into the averages for most marijuana, which remains around 3% and have even less relevance to the marijuana that most younger users get.)

See
Marijuana Prohibition And Potency, Price, And Safety -- 
"Is Marijuana Stronger Than It Was Back In the '60s, When Everyone Thought It Was Harmless?"
Analysis By Richard Cowan

The recent US Institute of Medicine marijuana report cited smoking as the number one health concern of using medical marijuana. Based on THC content, government cannabis delivers far less medicine per puff of smoke than the pot clubs’.

The Institute of Medicine report recommended that some patients be permitted to smoke marijuana, but the government says it does not intend to approve "single-patient requests for marijuana," because "they do not produce use useful scientific information."
(Marijuananews note: That is because the DEAland government does not care about the suffering of individual Americans, otherwise known as "anecdotes.")
See
Drug Czar Issues Statement On Marijuana For Medical Research:
"Such uses must only be part of clinical studies to expand the body of scientific understanding."
Helping the Patients Does Not Enter Into It.

"It is a tiny step forward, but far too tiny," said Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Lindesmith Center, which backs a variety of drug-reform and harm reduction organizations. "It’s an implicit acknowledgement that the government has blocked research into medical marijuana for explicitly political reasons for the last two decades."
See
Never Mind What HHS Says Now About Medical Marijuana, Here Is What The DEA Says.
And No One Could Reasonably Be Expected To Trust A Government That Lies Like This.
and
The Harsh Reality Of Clinical Trials
Shows Another Case of The Double Standard For Medical Marijuana.
The Context For "Research." -- 2 Articles

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