Pubdate: Wed, 04 Dec 2002 Source: Lumberjack, The (CA Edu) Copyright: The Lumberjack Newspaper, Humboldt State Univesity, 2002 Contact: http://www.thejack.org/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2736 Author: Nolan O'Brien, Science Editor FEDERAL CANNABIS PROVIDED TO SELECT FEW Medical Marijuana Grown And Distributed Since 1989 The U.S. department of Health and Human Services is growing marijuana for medical use, according to department officials and marijuana recipients. Although the federal program researching medicinal applications of marijuana was aborted in 1992, a few test subjects are still smoking marijuana grown by the federal government. The program was never granted an official name, according to Steven Gust, acting director of the institute's international program. The experimental program allowed individuals to apply for access to marijuana, a substance the program helped redefine as an "investigative new drug." "It has long been postulated that there could be medical benefits from either marijuana or from some of the compounds," said Campbell Gardett, department spokesman. "Our role in all of this, as a science agency, is to try and determine whether there is a legitimate benefit that could be derived from marijuana." The departmental tasked with growing, storing and distributing federal research-grade marijuana is the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "The government actually has a contract with the University of Mississippi to grow marijuana," Gust said. "There is actually a lot of research that's going on, on marijuana." The research Gust referred to does not focus on marijuana's potential applications. Instead, it examines the effects of marijuana. "I smoke about a quarter ounce a day," said George McMahon, recipient of the federally-produced medical marijuana and former test subject. "It's mostly leaf." According to Gust, researching medical applications of illegal substances is permitted if they are classified as investigative new drugs by the FDA. "They grow a consistent research grade of marijuana," Gardett said of the institute. McMahon's access to the institute's medical marijuana was approved to alleviate pain, spasms and nausea. "I actually filed my first application in '88," McMahon said. "By 1990 they had run out of reasons why they couldn't give me marijuana." Following a review of the medical-marijuana patient program in 1992, the overseeing department closed access to new members. Despite the program's closure to new patients, the few original patients are still receiving federal marijuana as a medical treatment. "It was decided in 1992 that the patients who existed in the program - I guess for humanitarian reasons - were allowed to continue the program," Gust said. "One of the unfortunate things about the patient program is that it's all individual patients." Explaining that legitimate research requires a sample large and controlled enough to measure the potential accuracy of its findings, Gust said that no drug has ever been, nor will ever be approved on the basis of a single patient. "There were fifteen who actually made it," said McMahon. "There were 2,000 applications and 57 of those applications were finally approved for delivery. Fifteen of them were delivered." McMahon said there are six former test subjects who still receive federal marijuana. "It was determined that the program was not going to be providing scientifically valid information," Gust said. The department has since shifted medical marijuana research to the private sector. Independent entities licensed to research potential medical applications of marijuana are legally released by the DEA, allowing the researcher to administer the illegal substance to test subjects. "We created a new ad hoc kind of program," Gardett said. "We say the research is good and the DEA releases (institute marijuana) from a legal standpoint." The ad hoc program was announced in 1999 and was started to create a mechanism for providing research-grade marijuana to independently funded, private-sector researchers. "In the U.S., any drug that's not already approved for something, research must be done to demonstrate its effectiveness," Gust said. "When there is enough data generated, it's submitted to the FDA." Marinol is a publicly available prescription drug that earned the FDA's approval through this process. The active ingredient, Tetrahydrocannabinol, is a derivative of marijuana known as THC. Although THC is named specifically by the DEA as a schedule one substance - considered the most highly addictive of all regulated substances with the least legitimate medical applications - the liquid THC Marinol capsules have recently been redefined as a schedule three substance allowing for its commercial sale. "Most of the research that (the institute) has supported has not been on the medical applications of marijuana, but marijuana as a drug of abuse," Gust said. "It is something that would be more appropriately supported (elsewhere)." While the institute seems to be distancing itself from directly supplying marijuana to test subjects, McMahon remains one of the anomalous six people receiving marijuana from the government for purposes other than research. Privately funded research has generated the test results necessary for the Federal government approval to sell marijuana as medicine, at least for Unimed, maker of Marinol.