Pubdate: Mon, 01 May 2006
Source: Valley Advocate (MA)
Copyright: 2006 Valley Advocate
Contact:  http://www.valleyadvocate.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1520
Author: Salim Muwakkil
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization)

POT POLITICS

In opposing the medical use of marijuana, the Food and Drug 
Administration ignores mountains of credible research and joins the 
Bush administration's war on science.

The war on drugs is an attack on rationality. Reason lost yet another 
skirmish when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on 
April 20 that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use 
of marijuana. The announcement flatly contradicts the conclusion of 
virtually every major study on the efficacy of medical marijuana, 
including two performed by the government. In a New York Times 
article, Dr. Jerry Avorn of Harvard Medical School said, "This is yet 
another example of the FDA making pronouncements that seem to be 
driven more by ideology than science."

Avorn's criticism is one regularly leveled at the Bush 
administration--that it is using politics to trump science. Last year 
the American Civil Liberties Union released a report titled "Science 
Under Siege" that detailed efforts by the Bush administration to 
hamper scientific inquiry in the name of ideology and national 
security. The report found the that administration has censored and 
prescreened scientific articles before publication, suppressed 
environmental and public health information, and increased 
restrictions on materials used in basic scientific research.

For two years the Union of Concerned Scientists has circulated a 
petition statement which now contains the signatures of 9,000 U.S. 
scientists, including 49 Nobel Prize winners and 63 National Medal of 
Science recipients. The statement complains that the Bush 
administration advocates "policies that are not scientifically 
sound," and sometimes has "misrepresented scientific knowledge and 
misled the public about the implication of its politics." This comes 
on the heels of a host of other accusations against the 
administration--charges of censoring a NASA scientist on issues of 
global warming and burying data on the morning-after Plan B contraceptive.

But the FDA announcement on marijuana is perhaps the most blatant 
effort to ignore scientific reality. Critics charge that it was 
issued to undercut medical marijuana initiatives that have passed in 11 states.

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and John P. Walters, the 
director of national drug control policy (the Drug Czar), oppose the 
use of medical marijuana. The

Times quoted Walters' spokesman Tom Riley, who said the FDA's 
statement would put to rest what he called "the bizarre public 
discussion" that has helped legalize medical marijuana. But Riley 
failed to note that some of that discussion was sparked by an 
exhaustive DEA investigation into cannabis (the scientific name for 
marijuana) from 1986 to 1988. That study examined evidence from 
doctors, patients and thousands of documents regarding marijuana's 
medical utility.

Following a hearing on the study's findings, the DEA's administrative 
judge Francis L. Young released a ruling in 1988 that noted, "Nearly 
all medicines have toxic, potentially lethal effects. But marijuana 
is not such a substance " Marijuana in its natural form, he said, "is 
one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By 
any measure of rational analysis, marijuana can be safely used within 
a supervised routine of medical care. ... It would be unreasonable, 
arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between 
those sufferers and the benefits of this substance."

The New England Journal of Medicine , the American Academy of Family 
Physicians, the American Public Health Association, AIDS Action 
Council and dozens of other medical groups have endorsed medical 
marijuana. Despite this and a growing wealth of new information about 
the therapeutic value of pot and its analogues (particularly new 
research on cannabanoid medicine by Dr. Raphael Mechoulam of Hebrew 
University in Jerusalem), the U.S. government refuses to alter its 
prohibitionist restrictions on marijuana use or research.

Isn't it a sign of mental disorder when distorted reasoning is 
unchanged by empirical evidence? What is it about marijuana that 
drives our politicians insane?

Salim Muwakkil is a senior editor of In These Times, and an op-ed 
columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman