Pubdate: Sat, 26 Dec 2015
Source: Baltimore Sun (MD)
Copyright: 2015 The Baltimore Sun Company
Contact:  http://www.baltimoresun.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/37
Author: Scott Dance

RESEARCHERS AIM TO CATCH UP WITH STATE'S POT INDUSTRY

Experts Want More Data on Effects of Medical Marijuana

Even though Maryland is following the lead of 23 other states in 
setting up a medical marijuana industry, the collective experience of 
those states has translated to relatively little understanding of how 
the dozens of active substances within the plant affect health.

As a result, Maryland will launch what likely will become a 
multimillion-dollar industry to make a psychoactive drug more 
available statewide without the benefit of proven information about 
the health implications.

Research is limited because the federal government classifies the 
drug in the same category as heroin and ecstasy, and restricts the 
cultivation of marijuana plants. Scientists need federal approval 
before launching studies that bring pot into labs and face oversight 
to ensure the drug doesn't end up in the hands of felons.

With marijuana plants on track to sprout in Maryland in the new year, 
companies vying for licenses and at least two state universities plan 
to expand on that knowledge here. Researchers at Frostburg State 
University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore want to know 
how and why marijuana eases nausea or prevents seizures, whether it 
is any more effective than standard medical treatments and what side 
effects it can cause.

Two companies have formed partnerships with researchers in Frostburg 
and Princess Anne. If they are chosen out of the more than 1,000 
businesses vying for licenses to grow, process or dispense marijuana, 
they could fund science that experts say is lacking in the field.

"Most research has been anecdotal," said Michael Horberg, a member of 
the Maryland Medical Cannabis Commission and executive director of 
the Mid-Atlantic Permanente Research Institute. "While they're 
formative and suggestive, they're anything but our standard 
scientific research."

While the partnerships are tentative - state officials said this week 
they don't expect to award the first licenses to grow and process 
marijuana until the summer - they illustrate untapped demand from 
both investors in the state's budding pot industry and from 
scientists looking for data to inform discussions over drug policy.

"The intent with the research is just to start collecting a lot of 
the data," said Ethan Ruby, CEO of Peak Harvest Health, a 
Cumberland-based venture tied to a Connecticut medical cannabis 
company. "Marijuana is illegal because there are no studies, and 
there are no studies because it's illegal."

Maryland legalized medical marijuana in 2013, but only allowed 
teaching hospitals to distribute it. None did, so new laws were 
passed in 2014 and 2015 allowing for private manufacturing and retail sales.

By the time the Nov. 6 deadline for applications arrived last month, 
the state had received 146 applications for a maximum of 15 marijuana 
growing licenses; 124 applications for an unlimited number of 
licenses to process marijuana into oils, tinctures and other 
products; and 811 applications to open up to 94 dispensaries spread 
equally across the state's 47 legislative districts.

Peak Harvest signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this month 
with Frostburg State, where faculty of the university's ethnobotany 
program hope to study marijuana in the same way they analyze 
substances like ginseng or black cohosh, two plants with medicinal 
applications.

That followed a similar partnership formed by Wellness Farms, a 
company with eight medical marijuana licenses across the country, 
with UMES. That university has programs in agriculture, pharmacy and 
pharmacology that could host studies of medical marijuana.

The research would differ from ongoing federally funded studies, 
which largely explore issues of addiction or brain development and do 
not bring any marijuana into lab settings, according to a National 
Institutes of Health database.

For example, a study at the University of Puget Sound is analyzing 
sewer waste to gauge marijuana consumption in Washington state, where 
pot is legal. The University of California, Los Angeles is studying 
how marijuana use during adolescence has affected the memory and 
cognitive function of baby boomers. And Michigan State University is 
testing the effects of chemicals found in marijuana on the generation 
of neurons in mice brains.

The researchers at Frostburg and UMES instead plan to conduct more 
basic research, analyzing marijuana plants themselves, the chemicals 
they contain and the way those chemicals behave in the body. They 
also could conduct research that more directly benefits growers and 
dispensers of marijuana, exploring how to most efficiently and 
effectively grow the plant and engineer it for desired qualities or 
levels of strength.

Any research that puts marijuana in the hands of scientists is 
regulated by the Drug Enforcement Agency, the National Institute on 
Drug Abuse, a branch of the NIH, and the Food and Drug 
Administration. The FDA and DEA review projects to ensure they are 
scientifically valid and safe.

The government also controls the supply of marijuana that can be used 
in federally funded research - it all comes from a marijuana farm at 
the University of Mississippi that is licensed by the DEA and under 
contract with the federal drug abuse institute.

That is all because marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, a 
category under the federal Controlled Substance Act that contains 
what are considered to be the most dangerous drugs that have the 
potential to cause severe psychological or physical dependence. They 
include heroin and LSD.

The oversight is required to ensure the drugs are kept in a secure 
place and that they are out of the hands of anyone with drug or 
felony convictions, as required by federal law, said Barbara Carreno, 
a DEA spokeswoman.

Asaf Keller, a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the 
University of Maryland School of Medicine, said conducting research 
involving marijuana requires a cumbersome process that can take 
longer than a year even before a study begins. He is studying the 
role of marijuana use during adolescence in causing permanent harm to 
cognition.

Even after getting federal and state approval for the research, 
Keller said, his lab is subject to "serious monitoring," including 
random inspections by DEA agents, a level of scrutiny he thinks is too high.

"It's appropriate for anything except marijuana," he said of the 
restrictions on use of Schedule I drugs in research.

Groups like the National Cannabis Industry Association have argued to 
have marijuana placed in a different category of drugs under federal 
law, if not to make more aggressive changes in the law, said Taylor 
West, the group's deputy director.

A Brookings Institution report released in October suggests the 
intense oversight of marijuana research has "paralyzed" efforts to 
study it and "threatened the integrity of research freedom." The 
report advocated for broader production of marijuana for use in 
research, and reforms to licensing and registration requirements.

Carreno said the concerns are unfounded because there are 300 
researchers approved to do research on marijuana.

"The DEA has facilitated marijuana research for decades," she said. 
"It's not correct to say that our limitations keep research from being done."

Researchers at Frostburg are unsure of what sort of research they 
might be able to do. Joseph Hoffman, dean the university's College of 
Liberal Arts and Sciences and administrator of its Appalachian Center 
for Ethnobotanical Studies, said faculty and students may be limited 
to analysis of data that Peak Harvest would share.

"We know what we can't do, and that's almost anything," Hoffman said.

Horberg, the state cannabis commission member who chairs its research 
subcommittee, said the rollout of Maryland's medical marijuana 
program at least means the chance to gather larger sets of data on 
pot users and their health. Researchers may be able to conduct 
natural experiments or use sophisticated statistical models to make 
conclusions about the effects of medical marijuana use, he said.

Studies that have been conducted show mixed results. A review of 79 
studies published by the Journal of the American Medical Association 
in June found some success treating chronic pain and the effects of 
multiple sclerosis but less evidence supporting other common 
medicinal applications of pot, including in people with cancer and 
those infected with HIV.

Without more of that sort of data, it will be hard to evaluate any 
benefits or risks of medical marijuana.

"I think that's only going to be through well-sponsored research," Horberg said.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom