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South American, U.S. Herbicide Contamination to Be Studied Under Legal Pot-Farm Contract
04-12-06 | ThePeacockReport | Steve Peacock

An ongoing assessment of potential contamination caused by U.S.-sponsored herbicide eradication of drug crops in South America and domestically will soon begin, according to a recently obtained National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) planning document. The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) has received a five-year, $6 million federal contract to carry out this and other cannabis-related tasks at its National Center for Natural Products -- which operates the only legal marijuana farm in the U.S.

In addition to analyzing marijuana seized by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Center will, ironically, grow and harvest up to 1,000 kilos of bulk pot, while separately producing and distributing hundreds of thousands of high, low and zero-potency marijuana cigarettes to be used in clinical research. The Ole Miss facility also must “extract, analyze, store [and] prepare” the cannabis for the sake of determining its potency. According to the project’s "statement of work," one of those tasks includes the extraction and storage of one kilo of pure THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.

The primary, stated function of the overall endeavor is to provide necessary materials to researchers, who will then study the effects of marijuana abuse as well as the potential medicinal use of cannabis.


The document says the suspected contamination raises similar concerns to those raised in late 1970s, when the U.S. was heavily dousing Mexican marijuana fields with herbicides. Those concerns centered upon the potentially heightened damage caused by the combined burning and inhalation of marijuana smoke and toxic herbicides.

“This concern is continuing still with the current policies on herbicide eradication,” the document acknowledges. This facet of the Ole Miss contract is "an integral part of the... congressionally mandated alert system for assessing the public health impact of such contamination."

The Center describes itself as “the nation's only university research center devoted to improving human health and agricultural productivity through the discovery, development and commercialization of pharmaceuticals and agrochemicals derived from plants, marine organisms and other natural products.” However, its website plays down the Center’s role in growing and analyzing marijuana. In fact, it makes no mention of the drug whatsoever.

The awarding of the contract comes several months after more than three dozen U.S. Congress members wrote to DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy, urging her to allow other legitimate institutions to produce marijuana for research. Specifically, they are seeking to have her remove NIDA‘s “unjustifiable monopoly on the production of marijuana for legitimate medical and research purposes in the United States, grown under contract to NIDA at the University of Mississippi.”

The Congress members wrote the letter on behalf of Professor Lyle Craker of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, whom they say should be licensed “as a bulk manufacturer of marijuana for distribution exclusively to federally-approved researchers.“

They claim that DEA licensing of Prof. Craker's proposed facility would be in the public interest, as it would “provide privately-funded sponsors of FDA-approved research the necessary opportunity to conduct studies with a strain of marijuana of their own choosing, with immediate access to the strain for all FDA-approved studies and for possible prescription use.”