Category — Research

Have you ever noticed how prohibitionists in power keep fighting medical marijuana by saying that it is out of control, and somehow causing a breakdown in society, endangering the public, sending the wrong message to kids, etc.? Have you also noticed that they will freely spend time and taxpayer money trying to undermine medical marijuana programs and restrict the rights of patients?

We’re seeing it in Arizona with Gov. Jan Brewer’s egregious lawsuit to interfere with her state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law, which even the federal government thinks is a waste of time. We’re seeing it in Oregon, where a local sheriff is so hellbent on denying the 2nd Amendment rights of medical marijuana patients that he is willing to use state funds to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court.

Now, long-time medical marijuana foe Bill Schuette, attorney general of Michigan, has announced his plans to  introduce legislation this fall that would supposedly stop the abuse of the medical marijuana system there.

Hold on a minute. Aren’t law enforcement supposed to enforce the laws, not make them? That’s a topic for another time.

The main focus of the as-yet-unfinished bill will be curbing the amount of “drugged-driving” accidents by severely limiting the ability of medical marijuana patients to ever drive a car.

From the press release:

“Schuette noted confusing inconsistencies between the Michigan Motor Vehicle Code and the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act must be eliminated to preserve safety on Michigan roadways.  A longstanding safety provision in the Michigan Motor Vehicle Code prohibits driving with any amount of marijuana in your system.  In contrast, the MMMA references driving “under the influence of marijuana,” a term which is not defined in state law or by uniform scientific standards, and creates a different standard for medical marijuana users. …

Schuette cited statistics recently released by the Michigan State Police which indicate that marijuana-related fatalities remain the most common drug-related automobile fatality, and that such fatalities are on the rise in Michigan.

“Driving with marijuana in your system is unsafe and jeopardizes the safety of our roadways,” said Schuette.  “If you take drugs, don’t take the wheel.”

It is never a good idea to get behind the wheel while impaired by any substance. That being said, the statements of the attorney general can best be described as baseless fear-mongering.

First of all, multiple studies and mountains of anecdotal evidence have proven that merely having marijuana in one’s system is not an indicator of impairment, or even intoxication. Marijuana metabolites can stay in one’s system for up to a month after using it, and THC can stay in one’s system for a week. Yet the effects wear off within a few hours. The Michigan Medical Marihuana Act recognizes this by changing the wording of driving restrictions for medical marijuana patients to driving “under the influence,”, meaning that the patient has medicated recently and is still experiencing some intoxicating effects. Despite Schuette’s claim, “under the influence” is used in the provision of Michigan’s DUI laws that apply to all other prescription medications — MCL 257.625 (1)(a).

Under the changes proposed by Schuette, this difference would be removed, making it illegal for patients to operate a car with any marijuana in their system whatsoever. Most medical marijuana patients always have marijuana in their system. Even those who only use occasionally may have to use large amounts that can leave traces in the body for some time.

Basically, this amounts to saying that if a person finds that marijuana is the best medicine to treat their condition, he or she must forfeit their driving privileges or wait weeks after medicating to drive. This restriction is not applied to any other medicine in Michigan. This is medical bigotry, plain and simple. Patients are already dealing with trying to live normal lives and treat their conditions. They have it hard enough as it is. And Bill Schuette wants to make their lives even harder.

Secondly, the assertion that marijuana is involved in more automobile related fatalities than any other drug is completely false, unless one uses the definition that the Attorney General would like to apply to medical marijuana patients. The study cited in the press release used just that definition, however, and counted every fatal accident in which the driver had any marijuana in his or her system! This means that if someone smokes a joint, and three weeks later gets in a car (maybe after a few cocktails) and kills someone, it is a marijuana-related auto fatality.

It sure is easy to scare people when you don’t care about science.

This is illustrative of the need to get away from chemical intoxication testing and go back to physical impairment tests in driving situations. It should not matter what is in someone’s bloodstream, particularly for medical marijuana patients. Whether or not they are impaired should be the primary concern for law enforcement, and they don’t need fancy blood tests or saliva swabs to determine that. They’ve been doing just fine since the invention of the automobile.

The last two weeks have been full of announcements from the federal government about marijuana policy. None of them has been positive, and none of them should be surprising.

First, the Department of Justice stated that it retained the ability to prosecute anyone who cultivates, processes, or distributes medical marijuana, regardless of state law. As noted earlier on this blog, this is not really a change in policy, but it is certainly disappointing to see the Department of Justice is unwilling to publicly recognize the legitimacy of state medical marijuana laws and would rather have patients purchasing their medicine from dangerous, illicit dealers.

Then, in a move that shouldn’t have surprised anyone, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the agency tasked with determining the legal status of drugs according to the Controlled Substances Act, decided to keep marijuana as a Schedule I substance. This classification means that the DEA will continue to assert that marijuana has no accepted medical use and should continue to be a high enforcement priority. Never mind the growing mountain of peer-reviewed studies that show the medical efficacy and relative safety of marijuana. The DEA will only pay attention to government studies, which are not approved unless the goal is to find negative effects, not medical benefits. We should not expect them to reschedule marijuana in the foreseeable future, especially since marijuana enforcement is an easy source of cash and prestige. Americans for Safe Access is currently appealing the decision in federal court, however, and hopefully they will gain some traction on this point and force the DEA to recognize the evidence in support of medical marijuana.

All this was followed by the release of the National Drug Control Strategy, which basically states that the Obama administration will continue to use scarce resources to combat the use of marijuana through criminal justice means, as well as a slightly increased program of harm reduction (which the President has said was going to be his primary focus). The strategy admits that marijuana use is at its highest in the last eight years, yet wants to continue the same strategy it has been utilizing during that same period!

The new strategy also mentions medical marijuana and, while admitting that there may be some medical uses for individual components of marijuana, continues to say that it should pass through the FDA approval process. This would be nice, if we could get all the federal agencies whose stamps of approval are needed to actually allow such research. So far the efforts of those trying to go through the official research and approval process have been blocked. In addition, the new strategy claims that medical marijuana “sends the wrong message to children” and increases the likelihood of adolescents using marijuana. This point ignores the fact that in most medical marijuana states, teen use has actually decreased since passing medical marijuana laws. Data supporting this can be found in the Marijuana Policy Project’s Teen Use Report.

So what does all this mean?

It means that all we can expect from the federal government is support of the status quo. We might get some minor concessions here and there, and the fact that the Ogden Memo has been (mostly) followed by the DOJ should not be overlooked. However, we should not look to the federal government to change policy in any drastic way simply of its own free will. They must be legally compelled to do so.

This is why we don’t need statements of policy, nice as they may be. We need different laws. We need something much more binding than policy statements, which can be distorted and rescinded at any moment without legal backing. It is imperative that we convince our legislators to support bills that will weaken the federal government’s control over marijuana policy and enforcement.

Please contact your representative in Congress, and tell them to support H.R. 2306. This bill would remove the federal government’s ability to interfere with state marijuana laws and policies. Legal change is what we really need if we want to see positive change in federal behavior.

Today, the Marijuana Policy Project released an updated version of the Teen Use Report, which analyzes all available data from medical marijuana states both before and after passing their medical marijuana laws. The purpose behind this was to find out if permitting patients to use their medicine “sends the wrong message” to teens, as prohibitionists are so quick to claim.

Well, it turns out that it doesn’t. In fact, of the 13 states with available data, teen use rates have stayed the same or decreased since enacting medical marijuana laws. In some cases, these drops in teen use are pretty significant. This is not meant to imply that there is a causal relationship between medical marijuana and a drop in teen use. What the report does show, however, is that there is definitely no causal relationship between medical marijuana and an increase in teen marijuana use.

Not surprisingly, we’ve seen that arresting anyone for marijuana, even teenagers, does nothing to curb adolescent marijuana use. Some parents may be asking right about now, “how do I prevent my teenager from using marijuana?”

According to a study released this week by the University of Washington, the answer is … talk to them!

DealFlow Media is hosting The Marijuana Conference in San Francisco on June 16 and 17. This is the only non-biased event covering the business, legal, and health issues surrounding the growing debate over marijuana in the United States. MPP’s own Rob Kampia will be speaking on the opening panel discussing efforts to make marijuana legal in 2012.

For more information on the conference or to register, please visit: http://www.mjbusinessreport.com/conferences/mj_conference_11.cfm

The agenda for this two-day event covers everything from the legal and regulatory concerns, the economics of a small business or dispensary, tax implications, ancillary business opportunities, legislative updates, health issues, the structure of investments, and how federal and state laws impact businesses structuring start-up capital.

Some other guests include:

• Robert Raich, Esq.
• Dale Sky Jones, Coalition for Cannabis Policy Reform & Oaksterdam University
• Stephen DeAngelo, Harborside Health Center
• Ed Rosenthal, Quick Trading Company
• Assemblymember Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco)
• Angel McClary Raich, ARCH Collective
• Dr. Robert Martin, CW Analytical Laboratories
• Cheryl Brown, Medical Marijuana Business Alliance & CSSB Private Bank
• Henry Wykowski, Henry G. Wykowski & Associates
• Al Coles, CBD Science
• Nick Brusatore, Terrasphere LLC  & British Columbia Institute of Technology’s Centre for Applied Research and Innovation Advisory Committee
• Annarae Grabstein, Steep Hill Lab
• Justin Hartfield, WeedMaps Media Inc. & General Cannabis Inc.
• Debby Goldsberry, United Cannabis Collective
• John Geluardi, Author: Cannabiz: The Explosive Rise of the Medical Marijuana Industry
• Ralph Morgan, Organa Labs
• Troy Dayton, The ArcView Group
• Steph Sherer, Americans for Safe Access
• Derek Peterson, GrowOp Technology

“The scientific record demonstrates that the cost of discontinuing the pursuit of potentially life-saving medications, because such compounds could be illegally diverted and abused, would be unacceptably high.”

You might expect that the quote above came from MPP or some other medical marijuana activists in response to critics who oppose medical marijuana laws. You’d be wrong. It’s actually from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the same agency that recently forced the National Cancer Institute to change its story after posting information on its website about marijuana’s efficacy in the treatment of cancer and chemotherapy side effects.

So what’s with the quote? You’ve probably heard of synthetic marijuana – K2 or “Spice” – which many people use instead of marijuana because (a) it’s legal (at least under federal law and in some states) and (b) it’s not going to get them fired if their employer drug tests. The chemicals are sprayed onto herbs which users smoke with the hopes of achieving a marijuana-like high. Unfortunately, while the chemicals are intended to mimic those in marijuana, they are actually much more dangerous and have led to numerous hospitalizations for rapid heart rate and blood pressure increases, anxiety, and hallucinations.

So where did the drug come from? Former Clemson University scientist John Huffman and his students discovered the compounds after obtaining a research grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). With a grant of just over $2.5 million dollars, Huffman and his students and colleagues spent a decade developing over 500 synthetic cannabinoids. NIDA had originally asked him to synthesize the human metabolite of THC, but later modified their request to ask Huffman to focus on potential medical applications and THC’s effect on the brain.

Now that the DEA has placed an emergency ban on several of the chemicals used to make it, NIDA is defending itself from accusations that it’s responsible for the scourge. When ABC News asked NIDA officials to comment on an upcoming story, they gave the quote above and pointed out that “[r]esearch into cannabinoids has the potential to usher in the next generation of pain medications as well as possible treatments for obesity and multiple sclerosis.”

Of course, I don’t point all this out to belittle NIDA’s comments – it’s true that this research is incredibly important. But given their position, you’ve got to wonder why NIDA officials have been working so hard to stifle research of real marijuana for so long.

As for the popularity of the more dangerous fake marijuana, that’s prohibition for you. If people had a legal, regulated way to obtain real marijuana without fear of repercussions, there wouldn’t be a need to create more dangerous fake alternatives. As Dr. Huffman himself says, “I talked to a marijuana provider from California, a doctor, a physician, and he said that in California, that these things are not near the problem they are in the rest of the country simply because they can get marijuana … and it’s essentially decriminalized. And marijuana is not nearly as dangerous as these compounds.”