Growing Marijuana With Government Money

A Conversation With Mahmoud A. Elsohly – Growing Marijuana With Government Money – Interview – NYTimes.com
Q. WHAT EXACTLY DOES THE MARIJUANA PROJECT DO?

A. Though cannabis had been used by man for thousands of years, it wasn’t until 1964 that the actual chemical structure of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol — THC — was determined. That stimulated new research on the plant.

At this laboratory, which began in 1968, we often investigate marijuana’s chemistry. We also have a farm where we grow cannabis for federally approved researchers. Our material is employed in clinical studies around the country, to see if the active ingredient in this plant is useful for pain, nausea, glaucoma, for AIDS patients and so on. For these tests, researchers need standardized material for cigarettes or THC pills. We grow the cannabis as contractors for the National Institute on Drug Abuse — NIDA. And the only researchers who can get our material are those with special permits. We have visitors at the building now and then who ask, “Oh, do you give samples?” We say, “No!”

…Interestingly, [research] led us to see that there was only one species of cannabis. It had always been thought that there were many. But you could see that the chemistry of this plant is the same qualitatively no matter where it comes from. What makes each different is the relative proportion of the different chemicals in there, which doesn’t make a different species. It’s really the same species, but different varieties of it. The different types of varieties hybridize very easily.

Q. DO YOUR NEIGHBORS EVER KID YOU ABOUT YOUR JOB?

A. My daughters, when they were in grade school, the teachers would ask them, “What does your father do?” And they’d say, “He grows marijuana.” And the teachers’ eyes would grow wide. After a while, my daughters said: “He works at the University of Mississippi. He’s a professor.”

One troubling part of this interview is when Dr. Elsohly discusses the ability to genetically modify cannabis, and how black market growers have been doing this for years to increase potency.  And yet, when I speak with Elvy Musikka or Irv Rosenfeld, two of the federal patients who get their medicine from Dr. Elsohly’s farm, they tell me is is very low quality cannabis.  Why aren’t these patients getting the benefit of all this federal money and research?  A cynic might think you want to give federal patients bad pot, lest the public learn how much good quality cannabis can help these people!

I’m also intrigued that cannabis is cannabis, that these different strains are just different ratios of cannabinoids in the same species of plant.  We always get teased by the general public about the names of strains – that because they’re called “Medicine Woman”, “AK-47″, or “Alaskan Thunderfuck”, they can’t really be medicine.

If I may butcher Shakespeare, a bud by any other name will still smoke as sweet.  What’s in a name?  Have you caught some of these pharmaceutical names lately?  Celebrex, what exactly are we celebrating with Celebrex?  Or is it made from celery?  Rozerem?  Does that some from roses or does it make your skin rosy?  Lunesta?  Is that a Mexican nap taken at midnight (actually, yes, it is, sorta).  Are the names of cannabis medicines not valid because they’re not Madison Avenue-approved pseudo-scientific brand names with a Latin prefix or an “x” or a “z” in them?  Did you know that the generic name for the boner pill Cialis is “tadalafil”?  Ta-da!  It’s filled!

We’d love for cannabis varieties to have some sort of scientific-sounding ad-friendly name.  But you won’t let us grow it or sell it or test it legally.  So dedicated outlaw growers played backwoods Gregor Mendels and came up with brand names that would do well on the black market.  When you don’t have the benefit of multimedia branding campaigns and must rely only on word of mouth, and when the prohibited market demands high-potency product, “Alaskan Thunderfuck” sells more baggies than “Cannabizex”.

If cannabis were legal, I think it would still have brand names like “Afghani”, “Jack Herer”, and “Bubblegum”, but I think like fertilizer, it would also have a standardized ratio of THC/CBD/CBN/CBL printed on every bag.