The National Institute on Drug Abuse is soliciting proposals from qualified organizations having the capability to

(1) grow, harvest, analyze, store and distribute GMP grade cannabis (marijuana) on large and small scales;
(2) extract cannabis to obtain purified phytocannabinoids including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC), analyze, and store;
(3) prepare marijuana cigarettes and related products; and
(4) distribute marijuana, marijuana cigarettes and cannabinoids, and other related products for research and other Government programs upon NIDA authorization.

Offeror must possess suitable and secure DEA approved outdoor and indoor growing facilities, research laboratory with appropriate analytical instruments, and experienced personnel to conduct the project tasks. Appropriate DEA approved secure facility for manufacturing of marijuana cigarettes, and their storage, and DEA Schedule I registration for marijuana and THC are essential.

NIDA anticipates a 1-year with four 1 year options cost reimbursement type contract will be awarded. Additional quantity options for manufacturing cigarettes may also be required.

In order to handle substances under the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, it is mandatory that offerors possess a DEA Research Registration for Schedules II to V and demonstrate the capability to obtain a DEA registration for Schedule I controlled substances. All studies must be carried out under pertinent FDA regulations, such as current Good Clinical Practice (cGCP) and current Good Laboratory Practice (cGLP) regulations.

Paging Dr. Lyle Craker, please pick up the green courtesy phone!  I’ve got to believe that this is just a mere formality preceding the rewarding of this contract once again to Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly and the federal pot farm at the University of Mississippi.  But I guess it wouldn’t hurt for a few prestigious researchers like Dr. Craker to apply.

Oh, goodie, here comes a week of news stories on this old trope about Pot 2.0.  Hold on, readers…

OXFORD, Mississippi (CNN) — The average potency of marijuana, which has risen steadily for three decades, has exceeded 10 percent for the first time, the U.S. government will report on Thursday.

At the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project, where thousands of samples of seized marijuana are tested every year, project director Mahmoud ElSohly said some samples have THC levels exceeding 30 percent.

Average THC concentrations will continue to climb before leveling off at 15 percent or 16 percent in five to 10 years, ElSohly predicted.

The stronger marijuana is of particular concern because high concentrations of THC have the opposite effect of low concentrations, officials say.

Uh… what?  The “opposite” effect?  You mean if you smoked the old pot you got “high” and if you smoke the new pot you get… what, “low”?  If you smoke pot that’s somewhere in-between does anything happen at all?  Do you just stay “middle”?

The only “opposite” effect between low-quality and high-quality weed is the reaction you gave your dealer when you’ve spent $300 on an ounce of it.

In addition, while experienced marijuana users may limit their intake of potent marijuana, young and inexperienced users may not moderate their intake and possibly suffer from dysphoria, paranoia, irritability and other negative effects.

If these young and inexperienced users are smoking or vaporizing it, the time between intake and effect is only a few seconds.  It’s not like doing shots of whiskey, where forty minutes later while you’re on your sixth shot you realize you’re way drunk and should’ve stopped four shots ago.  With marijuana, you smoke it, you feel it.  If it’s not enough, you smoke more.  If it’s enough, you stop.

Potent marijuana also poses significant risk to the developing adolescent brain, said Edward Jurith, acting director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Absolutely.  That’s why we always say adolescents shouldn’t smoke pot.  Potent alcohol also poses significant risks to the developing adolescent brain, and its average potency ranges from 1.5% to 75.5%, and yet every year I see a new marketing campaign for some fruity, wine-coolery alcoholic beverage few people over age 21 would be caught dead drinking.

Increasing potency is leading to higher admissions to emergency rooms and drug treatment programs, officials say.

I don’t know if that’s an intended pun, but I doubt it.  I think they meant “more admissions” or “greater numbers of admissions”.  Either way, it is a lie.  The emergency room figure comes from DAWN, the Drug Abuse Warning Network, which tracks when anyone admitted to an ER tests positive for or admits use of marijuana.  Since marijuana is the most used substance and since it stays in your system for days or weeks, it’s no surprise it turns up in the people who go to the ER.  However, the DAWN stats do not measure the cause of the ER visit.  So, it is possible that you play softball, pull a hamstring, go to the ER, and they detect the joint you smoked at the picnic last weekend — ding, that’s a “marijuana-related emergency room visit”.  You might smoke some pot and shoot some heroin, overdose on the heroin and go to the ER, telling them what you’ve done — ding, that’s a “marijuana-related emergency room visit”.  You might be a medical marijuana patient, driving to work after medicating last night ten hours ago, and get T-boned by a drunk driver — ding, that’s a “marijuana-related emergency room visit”.

The drug treatment admissions are an even worse statistic.  When those ER folks let the police know you tested positive for pot — and remember, that only means you’ve used it, not that you’re currently high — the nice judge gives you the choice of going to jail of going into a drug treatment program (sometimes it’s not a choice).  So they arrest you for pot, sentence you to treatment, and then point to increased treatment numbers and say “see how dangerous it is; this is why we need to arrest people for pot!”

The average THC for tested marijuana during 2008 was 10.1 percent, according to the government, compared to 1983 when it was reportedly under 4 percent.

Even drugs seized at the United States’ southwest border are showing increasing potency, the Office of National Drug Control Policy says. The median potency increased from 4.8 percent in 2003 to 7.3 percent in 2007. Marijuana from Mexico and other southern sources traditionally had lower THC content then other sources’.

So then, what you’re telling us is that under your prohibition of marijuana, it has become more than twice as potent.  By your standards, during the time you’ve been arresting and incarcerating people for marijuana, it has become stronger, more people are in the ER because of it, and more people are addicted to it.

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.