WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Bush administration struck a parting shot to legitimate science today as the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) refused to end the unique government monopoly over the supply of marijuana available for Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved research. DEA’s final ruling rejected the formal recommendation of DEA Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) Mary Ellen Bittner, issued nearly two years ago following extensive legal hearings.
The DEA ruling constitutes a formal rejection of University of Massachusetts at Amherst Professor Lyle Craker’s petition, filed initially June 24, 2001, to cultivate research-grade marijuana for use by scientists in FDA-approved studies aimed at developing the drug as a legal, prescription medication.
Professor Craker’s petition was rejected despite the opinion of DEA ALJ Bittner that granting Craker a license to grow marijuana “would be in the public interest.” Judge Bittner issued a comprehensive, 88-page nonbinding recommendation to DEA Deputy Administrator Michele Leonhartt on February 12, 2007, following nine days of hearings, testimony and evidence presented by the ACLU and others on both sides of the issue.
DEA failed to take action on Judge Bittner’s recommendation until now, continuing the strategy of delay and pattern of unresponsiveness that has characterized the process since Professor Craker first filed his initial petition seven-and-a-half years ago.
Judge Bittner’s recommendation was based largely on the fact that marijuana is the only Schedule I drug that the DEA prohibits from being produced by private laboratories for scientific research, which has resulted in a unique government monopoly that fundamentally obstructs appropriate research and regulatory channels. Other controlled substances, including LSD, MDMA, heroin and cocaine, are available to researchers from DEA-licensed private laboratories.
In contrast, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) remains scientists’ sole source of marijuana, despite the agency’s repeated refusal to make marijuana available for privately-funded, FDA-approved studies that seek to develop smoked or vaporized marijuana into a legal, prescription medicine.
Forty-five members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Massachusetts Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA), and a broad range of scientific, medical and public health organizations have written in support of Professor Craker, including the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the National Association for Public Health Policy, the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation, as well as several state medical and nurses’ associations.
Despite contradictory federal policy, 13 states have enacted legislation protecting patients who use medical marijuana with a physician’s recommendation from prosecution under state law, and national polls consistently find that roughly 75 percent of Americans support the use of medical marijuana.
Shorter:
US: We’d like to use marijuana as a medicine.
THEM: Marijuana is a dangerous drug. You cannot use it.
US: But our experiences show it is a medicine!
THEM: For something to be a “medicine”, it has to be scientifically studied and proven.
US: OK, then we’d like to scientifically study marijuana.
THEM: No, you can’t have any to study.
US: Why not?
THEM: Because marijuana is a dangerous drug.
Judge Bittner’s final recommendation in support of Professor Craker’s petition is available at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medmarijuana/28341lgl20070212.html
The DEA’s rejection of Professor Craker’s petition is available at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medmarijuana/38298lgl20090112.html
Complete background on the case, including client profiles, hearing transcripts, a full selection of legal documents, media reports, and letters of support from lawmakers and scientists can be found at: www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medicalmarijuanafeature/index.html and www.maps.org/mmj/DEAlawsuit.html
An interview with Prof. Craker can be found at http://www.marijuanaconversation.org/interviews/
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The Government made a BIG mistake when they set up the DEA. They answer to no one!
And their abhorrent decisions flow through society, pitting the police against the people they swore to protect and denying sick people a very effective medicine, and for the rest of us a totally safe alternative to the deadly but legal recreational drugs currently available.
This decision means the DEA retains all control over the production of research-grade marijuana, particularly to whom it’s given to for studies. The DEA obviously only gives it to research that’s going to prove how dangerous it is, and never to research that might find that it actually has medicinal uses. For if an FDA-approved study found that marijuana has medicinal uses then marijuana would by law HAVE to be taken out of Schedule I.
The DEA is determined, and able, to ensure that this will NEVER happen. :(