Our own Paul Armentano’s latest article at the Huffington Post:

It’s the “catch-22″ that has plagued medical marijuana advocates and patients for decades. Lawmakers and health regulators demand clinical studies on the safety and efficacy of medical cannabis, but the federal agency in charge of such research bars these investigations from ever taking place.

Under federal law, NIDA (along with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration) must approve all clinical and preclinical research involving marijuana. NIDA strictly controls which investigators are allowed access to the federal government’s lone research supply of pot – which is authorized via a NIDA contract and cultivated and stored at the University of Mississippi.

Speaking to The New York Times in a January 19, 2010 article entitled, “Researchers Find Medical Study of Marijuana Discouraged,” NIDA spokeswoman Shirley Simson said: “As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use. We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.”

Read the entire article at The Huffington Post.

(NBC Miami) When you think of the world’s most prolific pot smokers, certain names come to mind: Snoop, Cheech and Chong, Willie Nelson.

How about Irvin Rosenfeld?

The 56-year-old Fort Lauderdale stockbroker will put his name among the greats when he sets a world record tomorrow for weed consumption while lighting up his 115,000th joint.

One of the few people I know can smoke me under a table - Irv Rosenfeld at NORML CON 2006

The best part is that it’s all legal.

Rosenfeld’s pot has been provided by the government since 1982, when he became a patient in the Federal Drug Administration’s Investigational New Drug Program. Grown on a farm on the campus of the University of Mississippi, the weed is delivered to a local pharmacy where Rosenfeld gets it by the bushel.

Rosenfeld suffers from a rare bone disorder called multiple congenital cartilaginous exostoses, which causes severe pain, alleviated by a healthy dose of ganja.

He’s been getting 300 joints every 25 days for the past 27 years, and said he smokes between 10 and 12 per day.

The sad thing for Irv is that the ganja the feds grow for him is the schwaggiest of the schwag.  This is the marijuana grown by Dr. ElSohly in Mississippi and it’s about 4%-5% THC.  They don’t bother to manicure the bud much before grinding, so the joints contain stems and leaves and the occasional seed.  So don’t be too surprised when he tells you that smoking it doesn’t get him high.

I’ve also had the pleasure of knowing another of the four remaining IND patients, Elvy Musikka.  She has the benefit of being both a federal medical marijuana patient and an Oregon state medical marijuana patient.  She can tell you better than anyone the difference between federal schwag and Oregon’s finest, and the race isn’t even close.

What’s really disturbing is that the government set up this “Investigational New Drug Program” in 1978 and to this date they haven’t done a bit of investigation.  Irv, Elvy and the other two patients have never been surveyed or studied by our government to determine how these decades of medical marijuana use have affected the humans using it.  It might make you think our government never really wanted people to know how effective medical cannabis can be, huh?

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.

UPDATE!!! You can also read and leave feedback on this post at The Hill’s influential Congress blog here.

“This ain’t your grandfather’s or your father’s marijuana. This will hurt you. This will addict you. This will kill you.”- Mark R. Trouville, DEA Miami, speaking to the Associated Press (June 22, 2007)

Government claims that today’s pot is more potent, and thus more dangerous to health, than ever before  must be taken with a grain of salt.

Federal officials have made similarly dire assertions before. In a 2004 Reuters News Wire story, government officials alleged, “Pot is no longer the gentle weed of the 1960s and may pose a greater threat than cocaine or even heroin.” (Anti-drug officials failed to explain why, if previous decades’ pot was so “gentle” and innocuous, police still arrested you for it.)

In 2007, Reuters again highlighted the alleged record rise in cannabis potency, proclaiming, “U.S. marijuana grows stronger than before: report.” Quoted in the news story was ex-Drug Czar John Walters, who warned, “This report underscores that we are no longer talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s – this is Pot 2.0.”

Predictably, in 2008 the mainstream news media ran with yet another set of ‘news’ stories alleging that the pot plant’s strength had reached all-time highs. According to a June 12, 2008 Associated Press story:

“The latest analysis from the University of Mississippi’s Potency Monitoring Project tracked the average amount of THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, in samples seized by law enforcement agencies from 1975 through 2007. It found that the average amount of THC reached 9.6 percent in 2007, compared with 8.75 percent the previous year.”

Or not. An actual review of the 2008 U-Miss data revealed this nugget of information: The average THC in domestically grown marijuana – which comprises the bulk of the US market – is less than five percent, a figure that’s remained unchanged for nearly a decade. (See: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/pdf/FullPotencyReports.pdf, page 12)

Which brings us to this year. Naturally, the Feds are once again sounding the alarm, as reported today by CNN: “Marijuana potency surpasses 10 percent, U.S. says.”

I suppose, if nothing else, the government’s annual “new and improved pot” claims are good advertising for marijuana dealers. As for the rest of the public, it’s time for a reality check.

First, it’s worth noting that police and lawmakers made these same alarmist claims about the suddenly not-as-dangerous-or-strong-as-we-once-said-it-was pot of the 1960s, ’70s, and 80s. These allegations were false then and they are still false now.

Second, THC – regardless of potency – is virtually non-toxic to healthy cells or organs, and is incapable of causing a fatal overdose. Currently, doctors may legally prescribe a FDA-approved pill that contains 100 percent THC, and curiously, nobody at the University of Mississippi or at the Drug Czar’s office seems to be overly concerned about its potential health effects.

Third, survey data gleaned from cannabis consumers in the Netherlands-where users may legally purchase pot of known quality-indicates that most cannabis consumers prefer less potent pot, just as the majority of those who drink alcohol prefer beer or wine rather than 190 proof Everclear or Bacardi 151. When consumers encounter unusually strong varieties of marijuana, they adjust their use accordingly and smoke less.

Finally, if US lawmakers and government researchers were truly concerned about potential risks posed by supposedly stronger marijuana, they would support regulating the drug, so that its potency would be consistent and this information would publicly displayed to the consumer. (Anyone ever been to a liquor store that sold a brand of booze that didn’t post its alcohol content on the label? Didn’t think so.)

So let’s review, shall we? Our federal government ostensibly wants fewer Americans to consume pot. So they spend billions of dollars outlawing the plant and driving its producers underground where breeders, over time, clandestinely develop stronger and more sophisticated herbal strains than ever existed prior to prohibition. The Feds then inadvertently give America’s marijuana growers billions of dollars in free advertising by telling the world that today’s weed is more potent than anything Allen Ginsberg, Tommy Chong or Jerry Garcia ever smoked in their heyday. In response, tens of millions of Americans head immediately to their nearest street-corner in search of a dealer (or college student) willing to sell them a dimebag of the new, super-potent cannabis they’ve been hearing about on TV. The Feds then demand more of your hard-earned tax dollars so they can get more Americans “off the pot.”

Then next year we do it all over again: same time, same station.

Any questions?

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.

Although a lot of work that has been done on cannabis, scientists have not identified every cannabinoid, so many research groups are continuing to identify and categorize the chemicals in cannabis. Samir Ross from the University of Mississippi led one such group in the discovery of nine new cannabinoids, and they published the structures and biological activities of these chemicals in an advanced article in the Journal of Natural Products.

The researchers grew plants from high-potency Mexican C. sativa seeds and harvested the whole buds of mature female plants. They performed chemical extraction and purification procedures on the plant material to isolate the nine cannabinoids. … After figuring out the chemical structures, it was crucial to know how useful these molecules might be in terms of medicinal properties. The first good news was that none of the cannabinoids were toxic to cells extracted from African green monkey kidneys, which meant that they have potential as drugs. Upon closer inspection, several of the compounds had respectable biological activities, as well.

Compound 5 had potent antileishmanial activity, which makes it a possible candidate against leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that is spread by the bite of the sandfly. Compound 8 was effective at killing Staphylococcus aureus, a frequent cause of staph infections, and compound 7 had good activity against Candida albicans, a fungus that gives people oral and genital infections. The other cannabinoids weren’t as biologically active, but they all had some drug potential. For insistence, compounds 2 and 6 were mildly affective against MRSA, and compound 1 had some antimalarial activity.

The identification of these biologically relevant cannabinoids will give natural product chemists new ideas for future drugs. Even the less active ones can turn out to be useful, as chemists can make modifications of the structures that are more potent.

via New biologically active compounds from cannabis – Ars Technica.

Oh cannabis, is there anything you can’t do?  Didn’t these guys get the memo from the US government that cannabis has “no recognized medicinal value in the United States”?  Oh, wait, sorry, my bad – that’s only raw natural cannabis that is medically useless.  If you break it down into its cannabinoid compounds, patent it, put it in a pill, mark it up 2,000% – 20,000% for a healthy profit, and require people to go through a doctor and a pharmacist to get it, if they can afford it and their insurance will cover it, then it has “accepted medical use” and is only capable of “moderate to low dependence”.

“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

Marijuana law reform is a civil rights struggle.  I will not attempt to equate this struggle to those of minorities, women, or gays and lesbians; however, there are some parallels among our fight and theirs and, indeed, some threads of drug law injustice are woven directly into the struggles of these groups.  The prohibition of drugs was one of the tools of oppression – the “Negroes” for their cocaine, the “Chinamen” for their opium, and the Mexicans for their marihuana.  It remains so today – while people use drugs at about the same rate regardless of race, African-Americans and Hispanics are disproportionately arrested, convicted, and serve longer sentences for drug use than white people.

Aside from the racist nature of the origins and applications, cannabis prohibition itself is an unjust law.  First consider that it isn’t merely against the law to possess, cultivate, traffic, buy, and consume marijuana – it is against the law to be marijuana.  Federal and state law enforcement spend millions of dollars and thousands of hours flying helicopters attempting to spot cannabis growing out in the wild.  Ninety-eight percent of what is seized is known as “feral hemp”, which is wild ditchweed with unsmokably-low levels of THC.  Officials rip up and destroy every plant they see whether it is owned or tended by any human, whether or not it could possibly intoxicate any human.   Logically, then, the ultimate goal of marijuana prohibition is not to simply stop humans from using it for intoxication, but to eradicate the species cannabis sativa L. from the earth!

Think of that: our official policy is the extinction of a species of life.  Certainly that’s not entirely new.  We’re dedicated to the extinction of all manner of microscopic life, after all, but that is a justifiable policy for self-preservation – we kill bugs that kill us.  I cannot think of another plant or animal we treat like cannabis.  Deadly plants like nightshade and belladonna are legal, annoying plants like poison ivy and poison oak are legal, even intoxicating plants like coca and poppy are legal when cultivated for prescription medications.  But the cannabis plant, the plant that cannot kill you is completely illegal*.  The plant that can provide the food, clothing, shelter, and medicine humans need to survive is illegal.  Nature itself is illegal.  How much more contrary to eternal law and natural law could this unjust prohibition law be?

The fight against cannabis prohibition, against this unjust law, is a civil rights fight.  This declaration will offend some people who will point to four centuries of slavery and Jim Crow, to lynchings and cross burnings, and to beatings and firehoses and condemn my declaration as making light of the plight of those who were truly oppressed.  I do not make light of those struggles, but I also recognize that civil rights are not a zero sum game and the degree and manner in which one is being oppressed are not what make the fight against oppression a just one.  Dr. King dreamed of a day when children would be judged by not by the color of their skin but the content of their character; I dream of a day when workers are judged not by the metabolites in their urine but the quality of their work.

Later in King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. …

I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law. …

The unjust law of marijuana prohibition is difference made legal.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our intoxicant, but does not bind itself to forgo their intoxicant.  The majority compels our minority forgo our medicine, but does not bind itself to forgo their medicine.  The majority compels our minority to forgo their religious sacrament, but does not bind itself to forgo their religious sacrament.  The majority compels our minority to forgo our source of food, fuel, and fiber, but does not bind itself to forgo their sources.

The majority may argue that they do not prohibit intoxication, medication, religious sacrament, or food, fuel, and fiber cultivation, so long as it doesn’t involve marijuana.  This to me sounds like the argument against same-sex marriage rights, that gays and lesbians are just as free to marry someone of the opposite sex as everybody else.  If we are given a right, but then proscribed from exercising that right in the manner that benefits us without a valid reason from the majority, it is not really a right.  When intoxication, medication, and sacrament are legal rights, but we are proscribed from using a demonstrably safer intoxicant, medicine, and sacrament, that is difference made legal.

No, we do not face the firehoses and the dogs and the lynchings, nor do we suffer in as great of numbers as did the African Americans Dr. King so graciously led in the years before my birth.  Our oppression is more subtle and codified into laws that restrict our housing, employment, and educational opportunities.  We do not tremble in fear of the midnight ride of white-robed vigilante Klansmen; our terror comes in the form of midnight no-knock raids of body-armored SWAT teams.

Like the civil rights struggles of the past, we work to change laws that oppress people, laws that enjoy support from the majority and are rationalized by tradition, religion, and junk science.  Unlike the civil rights struggles of the past, our constituency is an invisible group defined by lifestyle, not genetics.  That choice to use cannabis should not disqualify our fight to be treated as equals under the law.  After all, the choice to worship the God of your understanding is not genetic, it is a lifestyle choice as well, and our law recognizes that one cannot be discriminated against for that choice.  In fact, it is a bit ironic that one’s choice of God, a belief that cannot be proven by science to beneficial, is a protected right, yet one’s choice of cannabis, a plant that can be proven by science to be beneficial, is a federal crime.

The freedom to worship, of course, is an explicit right recognized by our First Amendment, but its foundation is in the inalienable rights given to us by our Creator, among them being Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Happiness.  If that last one – the Pursuit of Happiness – doesn’t give me the right to smoke a joint so long as I don’t affect anyone else’s Life and Liberty, then the Constitution isn’t worth the hemp paper on which it was drafted.

Also from King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he writes:

We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was “legal” and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was “illegal.” It was “illegal” to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler’s Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country’s antireligious laws.

Today’s freedom fighters are the people like Eddy Lepp and Charles Lynch, providing aid and comfort to the sick and dying by growing and supplying them with medicine, only to face the rest of their natural lives behind bars because what they did was “illegal”.

Today’s “whites-only” establishments are the “drug-free” workplaces keep cannabis users confined to low-paying part-time or temp service jobs, while the rest of the workers are allowed all the alcohol, nicotine, and prescription medications they desire.

Today’s lynchings are the Rachel Hoffmans and Jonathan Magbies who are murdered by police negligence, solely over their use of cannabis.  Today’s institutionalized discrimination is the over 20 million in my lifetime whose lives are marked with the scarlet letter of a drug conviction, affecting their child custody, government assistance, college financial aid, employment opportunities, professional licenses, voting rights, and liberty.

The prohibition of cannabis ultimately degrades human personality and is against moral law.  It is an unjust law that cannot stand, and we have a moral responsibility to disobey it.  In doing so, we express the highest respect for the law.  On this day when we recognize the greatness of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Dream, and on tomorrow, when we see part of that dream fulfilled, remember that we don’t fight to “make pot legal so you can get high”; we fight because the Pursuit of Happiness is our right and caging us for our method of pursuit is unjust.

Smoking pot is our civil right!

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
Martin Luther King, Jr.

* I recognize that marijuana is legally grown at ElSohly’s lab at the University of Mississippi.  But consider that marijuana’s two purposes – to supply five people grandfathered in to the IND program and to provide marijuana for studies to prove how awful marijuana is to justify its prohibition.  In this metaphor it would be akin to saving a few vials of polio virus so you could use them to make vaccines.

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.