Smoke Screen

Bill Britt, executive director of the Association of Patient Advocates. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Lyle Craker never wanted to pick a fight. For the past 25 years, the snowy-haired, soft-spoken professor of plants, soils, and insect sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst has studied such innocuous topics as the growth of rosemary and sage. The author of publications like Herb Gardens in America: A Visitor’s Guide, he’s not the sort of man who usually seeks out controversy. Today, however, Craker has found himself at the forefront of one of the most politicized disputes in science: the battle over the study of medical marijuana.

As someone with a longstanding affection for herbs, Craker has always been intrigued by marijuana’s medicinal potential. In 2001, Craker filed a request with the Drug Enforcement Administration to grow research-grade marijuana for privately funded studies of the plant. What he didn’t expect was that it would take three years of delays—and finally, a court ruling ordering the DEA to take action on his application—to even get a response. Or that when the answer would finally come, the DEA would reject his application, declaring it was “not in the public interest” to approve it.

The DEA’s decision should come as no surprise. Thanks to strict government regulation, marijuana is harder for researchers to obtain than more dangerous substances, including heroin and LSD. Even as medical marijuana’s benefits have been documented in recent studies and touted in publications such as the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, the government has refused to ease its restrictions. Some researchers have accused the Bush administration of deliberately road-blocking research. The government, the researchers argue, fears that a broader acceptance of medical marijuana could pave the way for the full-blown legalization of the recreational drug.

If the researchers’ accusations are true, it wouldn’t be the first time the Bush administration has been caught trumping politics over science. In 2004, the Union of Concerned Scientists issued a report endorsed by 48 Nobel Laureates accusing the administration of an “unprecedented” level of manipulation of the science behind issues such as global warming and nuclear power. Last year, NASA’s top climate expert told The New York Times that the administration pressured him to suppress his research on climate change. Meanwhile, the Bush administration’s insistent opposition to comprehensive sex education, embryonic stem-cell research, and the morning-after pill continues to rankle science advocacy groups.

The government, however, insists that its views on marijuana are informed only by science. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration released a statement concluding that “no sound scientific studies” exist to support the medical use of marijuana. In a House hearing this summer, the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s David Murray dubbed medical marijuana backers “modern-day snake oil proponents” and called doctors’ recommendations that patients smoke marijuana “medieval at best.” ONDCP spokesman Tom Riley accuses advocates of using medical marijuana as a back-door attempt to pave the way for broader efforts to legalization the drug. “Activists are trying to pull a fast one on the public,” Riley said. “It’s a sympathetic storyline, but something’s fishy here.”

The government’s concern is a reaction to the growing political momentum behind the medical marijuana movement: California legalized medical marijuana in 1996, and 11 other states have since followed suit. To counter these developments, the Bush administration has argued that its policies supercede state laws. Backed by the 2005 Supreme Court case Raich v. Gonzalez, which affirmed that the federal government can ban medical marijuana even when individual states have legalized it, the Bush administration has aggressively prosecuted cases in which the defendants’ actions were legal under state but not federal law.

Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance, agrees that the legalization of medical marijuana could impact the government’s broader drug policies. “Americans are profoundly scared of drugs,” Nadelmann said, “but marijuana is the exception to that rule.” The ONDCP estimates nearly 98 million Americans have used the drug at least once, and a late 2005 Gallup poll found that 78 percent of Americans support medical marijuana’s legalization. Nadelmann says the government’s resistance stems from fear over how medical marijuana could undermine the credibility of the broader U.S. war on drugs, which annually absorbs an estimated $40 billion in federal spending.

But Craker and other advocates of medical marijuana research maintain that they have no ulterior motives and want to study marijuana only to gauge its medical effectiveness. “If there’s a chance the drug can help people who are ill, surely we want more clinical trials to be run,” Craker said.

Recent studies confirm what many patients say they’ve known for years: Marijuana does have medical potential. Last February, University of California-San Francisco researcher Donald Abrams published a groundbreaking study in the journal Neurology that demonstrated marijuana’s benefits for patients suffering from HIV-related pain. This summer, Columbia University researchers published clinical trial data concluding that among other benefits smoked marijuana improved the appetites of HIV patients. Last month, a placebo-controlled University of California-San Diego study, slated for publication in this month’s Anesthesiology, found that moderate doses of smoked cannabis significantly relieve neuropathic pain. And back in 1999, a review conducted by the Institute of Medicine and published by the National Academy of Science concluded that while smoking marijuana has health downsides, marijuana-derived drugs “might offer broad spectrum relief not found in any other single medication” for AIDS patients and individuals undergoing chemotherapy.

To Abrams, the DEA’s opposition to marijuana is pure calculation. “My study only confirmed what people have known for thousands of years,” he said, noting that until 1943, marijuana was listed in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia and considered a legitimate drug. “If you try and understand the politics at work here, it’s pretty frustrating.”

Nevertheless, the federal government continues to downplay such evidence. Under the 1970 Controlled Substance Act, marijuana remains classified as a Schedule I drug, which means it is considered extremely dangerous and without medical value. Although all other Schedule I drugs—including heroin and LSD—can be legally manufactured in private laboratories for research, growth of marijuana for scientific purposes is prohibited. Currently, the only supplies of marijuana available to researchers are cultivated at the University of Mississippi and controlled by the federal National Institute of Drug Abuse, or NIDA. And these supplies are very difficult to come by.

Abrams learned this the hard way. He says NIDA opposed his research for the better part of a decade before finally giving him permission to proceed. A letter Abrams submitted to NIDA in 1995 declared the institute’s delays were the “worst of [his] career” and “unheard of, even in the most cumbersome of government bureaucracies.”

A court decision handed down last February bolsters Abrams’s case. According to a ruling made by Department of Justice-appointed administrative law judge Mary Ellen Bittner, the DEA is wrongly blocking further research into the medical benefits of marijuana. Bittner’s opinion, presented in an 87-page report (PDF) reviewing an exhaustive series of testimonials, including one by Craker, found that the DEA has repeatedly refused to supply marijuana for studies that aim to develop marijuana as a prescription drug. Bittner recommended that the DEA revisit and approve Craker’s application to establish a new center for the growth of research marijuana. The ruling, however, is non-binding, and the DEA has no deadline stipulating when the agency must accept or reject it.

Nevertheless, the political landscape shows promise for Craker and his colleagues. This September, Reps. John Olver (D-MA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) presented a bipartisan letter signed by 45 members of the House of Representatives to the DEA urging the agency to end the obstruction of research aimed at developing marijuana as a prescription medicine. An array of other organizations is also backing Craker’s application, including the National Association for Public Health Policy, the National Lawyers Guild, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, and the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation.

To be sure, smoking anything can damage an individual’s lungs, which is why organizations such as the American Cancer Society and the American Medical Association oppose medical marijuana’s legalization. The AMA, however, does support the development of alternate delivery systems for marijuana. But for end-stage cancer or AIDS patients struggling to cope with crippling levels of pain, the prospect of relief is likely to outweigh potential health risks from smoking.

Just ask Elvy Musikka, a 68-year-old glaucoma patient from Eugene, Oregon. For the past 19 years, she’s received medical marijuana to treat her disease directly from one unexpected supplier: Uncle Sam. In 1988, the FDA established the Investigational New Drug program, which began distributing marijuana to a limited number of patients. Musikka, who was left blind after surgery on her right eye that year, was eager to sign on. While the initiative was shut down in 1991 by President George Bush, patients who were already enrolled in the program were allowed to stay on. So every year Musikka receives up to 4,800 government-issued joints.

Musikka argues that the government’s stance on medical marijuana is “wacko” and the “epitome of hypocrisy.” Patients across the country are “being criminalized and denied their constitutional right to self-preservation and survival,” she said. “The law will continue to be broken by those who have the need to break it,” she added, citing the cases of seniors she knows who use the drug to treat pain associated with cancer and arthritis.

Meanwhile, Craker continues to wait for the DEA to re-review his application—though he’s not holding his breath. “It’s hard for politicians to say they’ve made mistakes” he said. “I just want a fair trial.”

Te-Ping Chen is a senior at Brown University.

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