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.
You can’t get more mainstream in the media than The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, who both highlight the growing medical acceptance of medical cannabis and the uber-political conditions placed on medical researchers who want to conduct rigorous scientific studies on cannabis’ medical efficacy and safety.
In other words, the federal government is spending millions upon millions of your dollars to solicit research to find a supposed ‘cure’ for alleged ‘marijuana addiction’ — at the same time that it is spending virtually no money on clinical trials to assess the medical value of cannabis itself.
The United States federal government has supplied Rosenfeld and three other US citizens for decades with a smokable cannabis medicine. Irv Rosenfeld has received his medicine for 27 years and is the longest known cannabis patient.
Just days after November’s Presidential election I outlined various ways that President-Elect Obama could use the power of the executive branch to shape U.S. marijuana policy.
Like the Energizer bunny, Drug Czar John Walters’ lies just keep on coming. It was only one-month ago when the Czar made a fool of himself on cable television — denying the fact the law enforcement arrest 800,000+ individuals on pot charges each year.
So if rats can deduce that whole cannabis works better as a medicine than a single synthesized molecule, what’s stopping our federal politicians and bureaucrats from reaching this same conclusion?
Of course, in an effort to get to the bottom of the so-called “potent pot” story, Ms. Yen might have thought to inquire why the US National Drug Intelligence Center’s 2007 National Drug Threat Assessment states