Pubdate: Tue, 23 Dec 2008
Source: New York Times (NY)
Page: D6
Copyright: 2008 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Claudia Dreifus
Note: Mahmoud A. ElSohly, 62, a research professor at the School of 
Pharmacy at the University of Mississippi, presides over a farm that 
grows nearly a hundred varieties of marijuana plants. As director of 
the Marijuana Project, he oversees the only federally approved 
marijuana plantation in the country. We spoke for two hours in 
September at his laboratory in Oxford, Miss., and later again by 
telephone. An edited version of the conversations follows.

A Conversation With Mahmoud A. ElSohly

GROWING MARIJUANA WITH GOVERNMENT APPROVAL

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 from the Drug 
Enforcement Administration and NIDA. We have visitors at the building 
now and then who ask, "Oh, do you give samples?" We say, "No!"

Q. Why bother cultivating your own marijuana when law enforcement 
organizations seize bricks of it every day?

A. The most obvious reason is that with confiscated marijuana, you 
don't really know what you have. When researchers are performing 
clinical tests, they must have standardized material that will be the 
same every time. And it must be safe. You certainly wouldn't want to 
give a sick person something sprayed with pesticide or angel dust, 
substances we've detected in some illicit marijuana.

When this project first started in the late 1960s, people thought, 
"Oh, we'll get materials for testing after a big bust happens." So 
the first batch was acquired that way. They made an extract out of 
the seized material, and it turned out to be contaminated with tung 
oil. That brought home the point: if you're going to do clinical 
trials on humans, you'd better know what you're using and where it 
came from. Hence, our farm.

Another thing: pharmaceutical researchers are often looking at 
something they call "the dose response." They want to know what 
happens to a patient smoking a marijuana cigarette with 1 percent THC 
versus 2 percent or 8 percent. Without standardized material, you 
can't accurately test which produced the best or worst result.

Q. One of the basic principles of agronomy is to start with good 
seeds. Where do your seeds come from?

A. That's a very good question. Most of the illicit material in the 
1960s came from Mexico. So, in collaboration with the D.E.A. and the 
Mexican government, we acquired those seeds. Later, we acquired 
others from Colombia, Thailand, Jamaica, India, Pakistan and places 
in the Middle East. That permitted us to study chemical and botanical 
differences. By 1976, we were growing about 96 different varieties.

Interestingly, that 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. Does this mean that one could make genetically modified cannabis?

A. Yes. Absolutely. That actually has been the trend over the years 
in the cultivation in the illicit market, and also in the legal 
market, where we are doing genetic selection, where we select 
specific materials that have the genes that produce higher levels of 
THC or some of the other ingredients.

Q. So out there in rural northern California, have they been 
improving their crops with modern genetics?

A. They have been doing genetic selection for years. You can see the 
potency keeps going up. In the 1970s, the seized marijuana had 
probably 1 percent or less of the active ingredient. Now, it's about 
8 percent, on the average.

Q. How did you come to your unusual specialty?

A. The honest truth is that it began out of necessity. In 1975, while 
I was in my last year of graduate school in natural products 
chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, the Lord provided me with 
twin daughters. My graduate student stipend was already over, and my 
adviser said, "You need to quickly find a job."

So he recommended me for a postdoctoral fellowship at the University 
of Mississippi's Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences. My 
first job here had to do with poison ivy. Then a better-paying 
position opened up at the Marijuana Project, and I moved to that. I 
liked the research, and I got on well with my supervisor and mentor, 
Dr. Carlton Turner, who later became the director of drug abuse 
policy in the Reagan White House. So, this work, it just happened.

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."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake