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Plainsman1963

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.
06-01-06 | ValleyAdvocate.Com | Salim Muwakkil

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?

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"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards." - Claire Wolfe

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Bowlblaze

The problem as I see it is that politicians never want to admit they were wrong; it sets a bad precedent. All the research coming out has backed them into a corner, so they will use every weapon they have to try to counteract the fact that more and more people are understanding the truth. But this is getting ridiculous. Doctors are experts in the field of medicine with years of university under their belts. Yet the government seems to wish to completely ignore the studies and basically say that many of the brightest minds in the world are talking out of their rear ends.

PS. Anyone else find the date of the announcement ironic?

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The government thinks we're all criminals. The people who are really the criminals are the people who view pot smokers as being no better than rapists, murderers, or corrupt politions
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