
Federal chokehold on marijuana stymies studies on epilepsy, autism - chc2149
https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/federal-chokehold-marijuana-stymies-studies-epilepsy-autism/
======
stephengillie
> _Federal law vs. state law: While the DEA was insisting on thoroughly
> vetting everyone who came into contact with the tiny amount of marijuana
> product used in our study, the reality was that less than a mile from the
> hospital, anyone could walk into a boutique shop or dispensary and buy it._

Why does a drug have to be legalized to be studied? If it can be purchased
down the road, why are you involving the DEA at all?

Is it solely in the pursuit of funding? Or will some journals not publish
research if the DEA is not involved?

(Legitimate question.)

~~~
Thriptic
Marijuana is defined as a schedule one drug by the DEA, meaning they believe
it has no accepted medical value and should not be studied. Being in
possession of or trying to purchase this drug for a medical study would
therefore be illegal. Publishing the results would be admitting you performed
a federal crime and you would be arrested. Additionally, human studies require
approval by an on site or third party institutional review board prior to
initiation to validate that they are ethical. It is unlikely that an IRB would
approve such a study because it would be viewed as unethical and it would
shift some liability to the university.

Its possible to perform studies with illegal drugs that are not schedule one
however. For example, cocaine is schedule 2, and I helped work on a study
where we purchased cocaine legally from Sigma and administered it to animals
to study something which actually had nothing to do with the stimulant effects
of the drug.

~~~
throwaway76543
Look, this is absurd. Yes, it's illegal but so what? Plenty of people have MMJ
cards, have scanned their ID at a dispensary, or have applied for state
cultivation licenses.

The idea that academia is somehow prevented from engaging in this field
because it's federally illegal is not credible and it tarnishes the integrity
of the field.

~~~
Thriptic
I agree that it is absurd that we cannot study weed legally. At the end of the
day when it comes down to illegal studies, it all comes down to risk
tolerance: Is an individual willing to lose their ability to practice academic
science (in that they can't get a university position, can't get federal
funding, and may have to absorb a felony) in order to perform a study that the
government says is not ok? For most people including me, that answer is no.
How you choose to proceed is up to you, but I will tell you right now that
embarking on such a study will end poorly.

~~~
tzakrajs
> I will tell you right now that embarking on such a study will end poorly.

Source?

~~~
Thriptic
Are you really asking me for a source to prove that being caught doing
something massively illegal will result in negative consequences? I'm going to
assume that when we talk about running a study, we are talking about using
marijuana in humans in a study, meaning a clinical trial.

In order to perform a clinical trial with marijuana, by law investigators
would need to get an IND (investigational new drug) application approved by
the FDA as FDA does not recognize marijuana as a safe and effective drug for
any indication. Part of this involves DEA review, and DEA will almost
certainly say no. Let's assume for the sake of argument that you do not care
about getting approval to run your study. If you do not get an IND approval
and you run a clinical trial anyway, your physicians will almost certainly
lose their medical licenses, all participants will be subject to multiple
criminal offenses, the group will lose all their funding, they be slapped with
enormous amounts of fees, and participants will likely lose their university
and / or hospital appointments.

[https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421163.h...](https://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/PublicHealthFocus/ucm421163.h..).

[https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ResourcesforYou/ucm2681...](https://www.fda.gov/AnimalVeterinary/ResourcesforYou/ucm2681..).

I don't have a concrete example for as to what will happen because to my
knowledge no one has been stupid enough to give the FDA the middle finger and
run an unlicensed clinical trial. FDA would never let this go unanswered
because it would completely undermine their regulatory authority and set a
horrible precedent. In effect, this is a perma-ban level offense, and people
that do it should expect to get massively punished.

~~~
stephengillie
> _In order to perform a clinical trial with marijuana... investigators would
> need to get ... approved by the FDA... Part of this involves DEA review..._

It only took you 3 coarse and unhelpful posts to answer my legitimate
question. Thanks for your cooperation. (5 Whys? Only 3 Whys were needed here.)

~~~
Thriptic
Yeah true, sorry for being a dick. I'm sick today, exhausted, and surviving on
stimulants; hence my aggression and suboptimal reading comprehension. I
shouldn't be expecting other people to deal with me in that state, so again my
bad.

------
tmaly
To get some historical perspective, this all started back with the stitch in
time that saved nine

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_switch_in_time_that_saved_nine)

FDR's pressure on the supreme court brought about the abuses of the commerce
clause. Before this, things like Prohibition required a constitutional
amendment rather than a law like The Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

------
honkycat
Everyone confused about the fucked up laws around drug control and the like in
the united states:

It is about locking up poor people in order to keep them from voting.

It is about filling our prisons with non-violent offenders so we can force
them to work for slave wages, and line the owners of the prisons and the
politicians they fund's pockets.

It's about political suppression, not about some moralistic crusade to protect
people from drugs.

"The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two
enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We
knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by
getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with
heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those
communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their
meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know
we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did." \- John Ehrlichman

~~~
andrewhn
I cant find this interview anywhere. I only see the far left leaning media
sites reporting on it. No evidence this statement was actually made by John
Ehrlichman. Do you have any?

~~~
jmcmichael
Forbes:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/03/23/nixons-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2016/03/23/nixons-
drug-war-an-excuse-to-lock-up-blacks-and-protesters-continues/#3909107d42c8)

CNN: [https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-
rich...](https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-
nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html)

The Independent: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/richard-
ni...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/richard-nixon-used-
america-s-war-on-drugs-as-excuse-to-target-anti-war-left-and-black-people-
claims-a6948521.html)

Channel4: [https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-war-
drugs-...](https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-war-drugs-war-
black-americans)

These were all in the first page of Google results with the query 'John
Ehrlichman quote drug law'.

~~~
andrewhn
But where is the interview???

I dont trust any of these sources.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Three of these sources link to it:
[https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-
all/](https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/)

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r_singh
Pardon me if this sounds naive, but I'm slightly confused as to how
recreational marijuana is legal in 9 states but the DEA still heavily controls
cannabidiol as if it were still illegal?

~~~
hoorayimhelping
Not naive at all. The issue is typically framed as States Rights and it's
wrapped around the 10th amendment:

 _The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to
the people._

This has been an issue since the 1780s, so it will take more than a couple of
sentences to give the whole rundown but it's like this. A few states are
saying "we have explicitly made marijuana legal for adult consumption, and
since the Federal Constitution doesn't forbid this, it's legal," and the
federal government is saying, "um, I don't think so. Cannabis is a schedule 1
drug that is regulated by the DEA, and it can't be made legal. And we intend
to enforce this with the DEA."

So every once in a while, the DEA come in and shake up a cannabis operation
(they raid the grow house or the dispensary or sometimes [rarely now] raid
patients' homes) that is legal at the state level but federally illegal and
there's a whole jurisdictional issue. The local police used to cooperate with
the DEA in decades past, but have since told them to get bent. Now there
aren't enough federal agents to deal with this, and a lot of local police
forces have realized that cannabis is really not a big deal, so sometimes
these things get enforced and sometimes they don't.

So we're in a gray area right now, where you can purchase cannabis legally or
medically in quite a few states, but it's still illegal at the federal level.
Apart from selective enforcement of this being scary, this opens up weird
issues for seemingly law-abiding citizens: Since cannabis is a schedule 1
drug, using it precludes you from purchasing a gun legally at the federal
level. So a law abiding citizen can easily unknowingly put themselves into a
situation where they're breaking federal law even though they're abiding state
laws.

If you want to see how ridiculous DEA drug scheduling is, check out this page:
[https://www.dea.gov/drug-scheduling](https://www.dea.gov/drug-scheduling)

~~~
komali2
Wait, peyote is schedule 1? How do they deal with native Americans taking that
as part of religious ceremonies?

~~~
delecti
Exemptions for religious purposes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote#United_States](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peyote#United_States)

------
KboPAacDA3
Can these studies be conducted outside the USA, away from DEA and FDA control?

~~~
jbob2000
Yes, all of the R&D money is about to move to Canada.

~~~
maitland
Funnily enough when government funding for sex/sexuality research gets
constrained - normally during a Republican tenure - researchers move to Canada
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/the-
big-b...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/relationships/the-big-brains-
behind-canadas-goodsex/article37056097/)

------
Dowwie
Fortunately, the United States doesn't have a monopoly on cannabis research.
For instance, Israel and Canada are funding studies.

------
dwaltrip
The organization MAPS is doing fantastic work in this space. MDMA-assisted
psychotherapy for treating severe PTSD is getting ready for phase 3 trials,
the last major step prior to FDA approval. Based on the very strong results in
phase 2, the FDA has awarded it the "breakthrough treatment" status. If this
passes, it will be an enormous game-changer for society's view on
psychedelics. The results so far suggest also that it will be an immense help
to the tens of millions of Americans who suffer from PTSD. I believe they are
working on approval in Europe as well, but are not as far along.

As for the article: MAPS is also doing work related to expanding marijuana
research, but I haven't been following that as much. However, based on the
above, I recommend donating if this is something you care about!

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danschumann
"an agency so entrenched in bureaucracy, that the will of the people is far
from them" should be the definition of the term "Deep State". Doing BS for so
long, they ignore the people.

How people maintain cannabis as schedule I is Vogon levels of incompetence.

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arcticbull
At least they will be able to do the studies in Canada in short order.

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EvangelicalPig
> In any case, my requests languished until I partnered with Insys
> Therapeutics and GW Pharmaceuticals

Yay bribery and corruption.

"Work with us and your problems will go away."

------
thomasfedb
I'm always amazed when cannabis is more tightly controller than cocaine —
which is also an illicit drug that has legitimate medical uses.

~~~
3x
But it's not... the feds will utterly fuck you over for possessing cocaine.
Just 5 grams of crack in many states is going to land you in jail for a long
time. Maybe you mean for research purposes, but even that I would doubt.

Such a shame because cocaine is a blissful, perfect drug and smoking crack is
an especially excellent way to consume cocaine.

------
djrogers
Why aren't these studies being performed in other countries with less
restrictive laws?

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nopacience
> In March, Insys launched a multinational study of 190 children to evaluate
> cannabidiol as a first-line therapy for infantile spasms. We are eager to
> see how well the compound performs when given in the first days and weeks of
> the condition. If it turns out to be effective, _cannabidiol would represent
> a substantial improvement over current drugs, all of which have serious side
> effects: One, for example, causes irreversible vision loss in as many as
> one-third of the children who take it._

Its ok to sell: "a drug that causes irreversible vision loss in as many as
one-third of the children who take it"

Its against the law: canabidiol from a plant, or even grow the plant yourself

~~~
e40
This shows the derangement of the people in charge.

Why is this? Why this derangement on the subject of cannabis? I've read a fair
amount, and every time I've brought it up, I get downvoted to hell. So, I'll
ask:

Anyone have a hypothesis on why a large number of our leaders, who happen to
be older white men, are insanely against this plant?

~~~
Anon1096
Personally I'm anti drug use because of how many friends and family members
I've seen turn their lives to shit after starting weed etc. I know there's a
lot of fine users but so many of my friends turned to weed to cope and then
from there went onto harder stuff like crack/cocaine. And really, I don't
support people altering their mind states through the use of recreational
drugs, alcohol included. It saddens me to see that no one can see any reason
against drug use besides "it locks up black people in prison" because for me
at least, that has nothing to do with marijuana legislation at all.

~~~
jakelazaroff
Can we not agree, though, that scare tactics around victimless crimes (in the
sense that the victim is also the perpetrator) are demonstrably ineffectual?
Abstinence-only sex education, for example, correlates positively with teen
pregnancy rates [1], whereas opioid overdose education is shown to decrease
opioid death rates [2].

Without getting into the moral argument of whether or not people should be
able to choose to alter their mental state through drugs (are we cool with
coffee as well?), it seems clear to me that the best policy is one of
education and harm reduction, not FUD and prohibition.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3194801/)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688551/)

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edoo
At worst it should be states' rights issue. It took a constitutional amendment
to ban alcohol, the product of processed plants. The federal government, as
per the constitution, has no right to impose such bans on the people.

~~~
kamarg
I'm sure the sale of marijuana for use in the study would probably run afoul
of the good old commerce clause that lets the federal government regulate sale
of just about everything.

~~~
edoo
Basically because of the atrocity that was Wickard .v. Filburn, 317 US 111,
1942, if interested.

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HIPisTheAnswer
A society's diet dictates its form. We are to consume ethanol, caffeine,
nicotine, and sugar, for those will create a manipulatable non-questionning
society.

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DocEasyE
Great read thanks for the insight DR

