Pubdate: Sun, 25 Jan 2015
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2015 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: David Kelly

SEEKING TO BROADEN MARIJUANA RESEARCH

Colorado Asks Federal Agencies to Let Its State Universities Grow 
Their Own Pot - Just for Purposes of Study.

DENVER - After years of trying to stamp out marijuana use on college 
campuses, Colorado officials are now asking the federal government to 
allow its state universities to grow their own pot.

The reason, they say, is that the legalization of the drug here has 
raised questions about its health effects, questions that can be 
answered only by studying large amounts and different strains of marijuana.

But researchers face bureaucratic hurdles in scoring pot from the one 
federally approved marijuana farm, a 12-acre facility at the 
University of Mississippi's National Center for Natural Products Research.

In a letter to federal regulators last month, Colorado Deputy Atty. 
Gen. David Blake said research on the "medicinal value or detriment 
of marijuana, particularly those strains not grown and made available 
by the federal government, have become important to the national 
debate over marijuana legalization."

Current research, he said, is "riddled with bias or insufficiencies" 
and federal help is needed to fill in the gaps.

Colorado wants its state universities to contract with the National 
Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA), which operates the pot farm, for 
expanded research on marijuana-namely, by being allowed to grow their own weed.

"We are basically seeking permission for an activity that has been 
banned for 70-plus years," said state Rep. Dan Pabon, a Democrat who 
helped craft the state's marijuana laws. "Universities are generally 
where the best research takes place so why not have the best and 
brightest working on discovering not only the dangers but also the 
therapeutic benefits of marijuana?"

He called the Mississippi pot farm a vestige of times past.

"But any time you engage in federal research, you need to abide by 
federal guidelines, so we need to be sure not to penalize the places 
that do this research," he said.

As Colorado's retail and medicinal marijuana markets have grown, so 
have a host of unanticipated health issues. The state has struggled 
to regulate edible pot to prevent overdoses while at the same time 
showing increasing interest in the potential benefits of cannabis.

"The conversation is changing," said Teri Robnett, a member of 
Colorado's Medical Marijuana Scientific Advisory Council, which helps 
oversee and evaluate cannabis research grants. "We have hospitals 
using cannabis therapy for epilepsy. What kind of epilepsy does it 
work best on? The only way we can find out is through research, but 
until we can grow our own marijuana all researchers have to go through NIDA."

Last month, the advisory council awarded $8 million in research 
grants to study the effect of pot on Parkinson's disease, epilepsy 
and post-traumatic stress syndrome.

"Hopefully, if NIDA can't provide what we need for those experiments 
they will let us use marijuana grown here," Robnett said.

The letter from the Colorado attorney general's office went to the 
heads of five federal agencies, including the Department of Health 
and Human Services, the Department of Education and the National 
Institutes of Health.

"We need the support of our federal partners to overcome the inertia 
that continues to complicate state efforts in this area," the letter 
said. "We are committed to working with you in devising a system that 
will permit research and study in a safe, highly controlled and 
regulated manner."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom