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The American
Civil Liberties has challenged the U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration's policy of obstructing privately funded,
FDA-approved scientific research that could lead to marijuana
being approved as a prescription medicine.
The ACLU's Drug Law Reform Project
represents University of Massachusetts Professor Lyle Craker,
Ph.D. in his appeal of the DEA's refusal to grant him a license
to grow research-grade marijuana for use in studies that aim
to lay the groundwork for developing medical marijuana into
a legal, prescription medicine. Were medical marijuana developed
through the pharmaceutical process into a legal medicine,
patients would be able to safely access it in pharmacies instead
of from corner drug dealers.
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| Professor Lyle E. Craker
is appealing the DEA's denial
of application to grow marijuana for medical research. |
MDMA (also known as Ecstasy), LSD,
heroin and cocaine are all more readily available to researchers for
medicinal studies than is marijuana. Through
the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the federal government
maintains a monopoly on the supply of marijuana available
for research. Scientists who want to study the medical benefits
of marijuana with the goal of developing it into an FDA-approved
prescription medicine either cannot obtain marijuana for their
research or receive from NIDA marijuana of inferior quality
and insufficient potency to meet the FDA's drug approval standards.
Science, not politics, should guide
medicine in America. Federal agencies such as the DEA and
NIDA have been blocking research and obstructing honest efforts
by researchers and scientists to find a way for patients to
get the medicine they need without risking prosecution and
imprisonment and without resorting to the black
market. The time has come for the federal government and the
DEA to hear the call of science and approve Professor Craker's
application to grow medical marijuana for this critically
needed research.
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