A federal appeals court in Washington is considering whether
marijuana should be reclassified from its current status as a dangerous
drug with no accepted medical use.

Last year, the Drug Enforcement Administration rejected a
petition by medical marijuana advocates to change the classification,
which kept marijuana in the same category as drugs such as heroin. The
DEA concluded that there wasn’t a consensus opinion among experts on
using marijuana for medical purposes. The petition had been filed in
2002.

A medical marijuana group, Americans for Safe Access,
want the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to
force the agency to hold a hearing and conduct findings based on the
scientific record.

The group’s lawyer, Joe Elford, said that the DEA had
misapplied the law. He added there are numerous studies that show
marijuana is effective as a medical treatment. The group’s legal brief
said marijuana could help people with chronic pain and the negative side
effects of chemotherapy, among other things.

Marijuana is classified under "Schedule I" of controlled
substances, meaning it has a high potential for abuse and no currently
accepted medical use. It’s lumped in with drugs like heroin, LSD and
ecstasy. Americans for Safe Access want to see it reclassified to a less
restrictive schedule.

Justice Department lawyer Lena Watkins said that marijuana is properly classified.

"It’s the most widely abused drug in the United States," she said.

Tuesday’s hearing was packed to capacity with many medical marijuana supporters in the audience.

The judges who will decide the case are Karen LeCraft
Henderson, a Republican appointee, and Harry T. Edwards and Merrick B.
Garland, both Democratic appointees.

On a Monday teleconference call, former Drug Enforcement Agency administrators and directors of the Office of National Drug Control Policy voiced a strong reminder to the U.S. Department of Justice that even if voters in Colorado, Oregon and Washington pass ballot measures to legalize marijuana use for adults and tax its sale, the legalization of marijuana still violates federal law and the passage of these measures could trigger a “Constitutional showdown.”

The goal of the call was clearly to put more pressure on Attorney General Eric Holder to make a public statement in opposition to these measures. With less than 30 days before Election Day, the DOJ has yet to announce its enforcement intentions regarding the ballot measures that, if passed, could end marijuana prohibition in each state.

“Next month in Colorado, Oregon and Washington states, voters will vote on legalizing marijuana,” Peter Bensinger, the moderater of the call and former administrator of the DEA during President Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, began the call. “Federal law, the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions say that this cannot be done because federal law preempts state law.”

Bensinger added: “And there is a bigger danger that touches every one of us — legalizing marijuana threatens public health and safety. In states that have legalized medical marijuana, drug driving arrests, accidents, and drug overdose deaths have skyrocketed. Drug treatment admissions are up and the number of teens using this gateway drug is up dramatically.”

Bensinger was joined by a host of speakers including Bill Bennet and John Walters, former directors of the While House Office of National Drug Control Policy; Chief Richard Beary of the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP); Dr. Robert L. DuPont, founding director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) and who was also representing the American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) and several others.

In response to the drug warriors calling out Holder again to take a strong public stance against these marijuana legalization measures, Mason Tvert, co-director of the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, the group behind Colorado’s Amendment 64 said to The Huffington Post:

We believe anything claimed by participants on the call today needs to be taken with many grains of salt. These people have made a living off marijuana prohibition and the laws that keep this relatively benign substance illegal. The nation wastes billions of taxpayer dollars annually on the failed policy of marijuana prohibition and people like Bill Bennett and John Walters are among the biggest cheerleaders for wasting billions more. The call today should be taken as seriously as an event by former coal industry CEOs opposing legislation curtailing greenhouse gas emissions. They are stuck in a certain mindset and no level of evidence demonstrating the weakness of their position will change their views.

This is an election about Colorado law and whether the people of Colorado believe that we should continue wasting law enforcement resources to maintain the failed policy of marijuana prohibition. Our nation was founded upon the idea that states would be free to determine their own policies on matters not delegated to the federal government. The Controlled Substance Act itself acknowledges that Congress never intended to have the federal government fully ‘occupy the field’ of marijuana policy. We hope the Obama administration respects these state-based policy debates. If Amendment 64 is adopted by the people of Colorado, there will be sufficient time before any new businesses are established for state and federal officials to discuss the implications.

Today’s call elaborated on a September letter that nine former DEA heads sent to Holder strongly urging him to oppose Amendment 64 in Colorado, Initiative 502 in Washington and Measure 80 in Oregon. “To continue to remain silent conveys to the American public and the global community a tacit acceptance of these dangerous initiatives,” the nine said in the letter to holder obtained by Reuters.

A month before the 2010 election in California, Holder vowed to “vigorously enforce” federal marijuana laws and warned that the government would not look the other way and allow a state marijuana market to emerge. California’s Proposition 19 was narrowly defeated in 2010 and the pressure is on Holder again to voice opposition to these 2012 measures.

When pressed by a reporter during a Q & A following the call if the group was at all surprised that Holder had not yet made a statement about the measures, former drug czar John Walters replied, “I think it’s shocking. All you have to do is say things that this administration has already said. It would help enormously and I think it would defeat these measures.”

Both Colorado and Washington’s pot ballot measures are quite popular with voters, according to recent polling and have been backed by an increasingly diverse group across a range of ideological perspectives.

In Colorado, if marijuana is legalized it would be taxed and regulated similar to alcohol and tobacco. It would give state and local governments the ability to control and tax the sale of small amounts of marijuana to adults age 21 and older. According to the Associated Press, analysts project that that tax revenue could generate somewhere between $5 million and $22 million a year in the state. An economist whose study was funded by a pro-pot group projects as much as a $60 million boost by 2017.

Amendment 64 has received support from both Democrats and Republicans in Colorado, the NAACP, former cops and other members of the law enforcement community as well as more than 300 Colorado physicians andmore than 100 professors from around the nation. The measure appears to be popular among Colorado voters with several recent state polls showing wide support.

In Washington, a 25 percent excise tax would be in place if the state passes Initiative 502, which state revenue experts say could generate as much as $1.9 billion over the next five years, The Seattle Times reported. If passed, the initiative would allow adults 21 and older to buy up limited amounts of marijuana or marijuana-infused food products and would create state-licensed growers and retailers.

The Associated Press reports that if Washington’s I-502 passes:

• Public use or display of marijuana would be barred.

• No marijuana facilities could be located near schools, day cares, parks or libraries.

• Employers would still be able to fire workers who test positive for pot.

• It would remain illegal to privately grow marijuana for recreational use, though medical patients could still grow their own or designate someone to grow it for them.

• It would be illegal to drive with more than 5 nanograms of THC, the active ingredient of cannabis, per milliliter of blood, if the driver is over 21; for those under 21, there would be a zero tolerance policy.

This is the second time that Colorado voters will decide on pot legislation — state voters considered and rejected a similar recreational pot legalization initiative in 2006.

Source: Huffington Post (NY)
Author: Matt Ferner
Published: October 15, 2012
Copyright: 2012 HuffingtonPost.com, LLC
Contact: scoop@huffingtonpost.com
Website: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Tomorrow, for the first time in more than 20 years, a court
will consider whether the federal government has improperly ignored
evidence of marijuana’s medical value in continuing to classify it as a
Schedule 1 narcotic, the category of dangerous drugs with no medicinal
value.

I-502 is not pro-pot

Back in the late 1980s, I agreed to be the anonymous “responsible businessman who supports drug law reform” guest on Jim French’s KIRO radio show.  My pseudonym: Jerry.  My stance: Our society would be better off by taking the crime out of the marijuana equation.  Back then, it felt risky to use my own name when talking drug policy.  The next day, I was walking through Edmonds, out for my morning cup of coffee.  Someone I didn’t know drove by, rolled down their window, and hollered, “Hey, Jerry…right on!”

About twenty-five years later, I was more comfortable publicly owning my role as an advocate for rethinking our society’s approach to marijuana laws.

By this time, I was a board member of NORML ( the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws ) and had started giving talks around town on why we should learn from the Europeans and, rather than lock up pot smokers, embrace a “pragmatic harm reduction” approach that treats drug abuse as a health and educational challenge.

One evening, a police sergeant whom I consider a friend asked me, “Why are you so committed to this? You and your friends could smoke pot with discretion all you want, and no one’s going to bother you.”

Only then did I realize why I was so committed to drug policy reform.

Well-off white guys in the suburbs can smoke pot.  But the majority of the 800,000 people arrested in the USA on marijuana charges this year ( and the 9,000 people arrested in Washington State ) were poor and/or people of color.  Some have dubbed the war on drugs “the New Jim Crow.”

Marijuana use-and how we deal with it-is a serious, expensive, and persistent challenge in our society.  And it’s time for a new approach.  That’s why I am co-sponsoring Initiative 502, which will legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana, allowing adults to buy up to one ounce from state-licensed stores ( much like the liquor store model ).

I-502 keeps marijuana illegal for those under 21 ( as we are committed to keeping marijuana away from young people ).  It comes with strict DUI provisions ( as we believe anyone driving intoxicated-with anything-should have the book thrown at them ).

And it calls for taxes on the legal sale of marijuana, which will raise ( according to government estimates ) $500 million a year for our state ( about $200 million for our general fund and about $300 million for health care and drug abuse prevention work ).

I-502 is not “pro-pot.” ( Most of its sponsors and supporters don’t even smoke marijuana.  ) Rather, it is anti-prohibition.

We believe that, like the laws that criminalized alcohol back in the 1930s, our current laws against marijuana use are causing more harm to our society than the drug itself.

Marijuana is a drug.  It’s not good for you.  It can be addictive.  But its use is a reality, and no amount of wishing will bring us a utopian “drug-free society.”

Marijuana is a huge underground business in our state-some experts estimate that it’s our second biggest crop, after apples.  Untold billions of untaxed dollars are enriching gangs and empowering organized crime.  And tens of thousands have died in Mexico because of the illegal drug trade in the USA.

Facing this challenge, we believe the safest approach is to bring cannabis out of the black market and regulate it.

I-502 is a smart law.  It has been endorsed by the NAACP; the Children’s Alliance ( representing about a hundred social service organizations in Washington State, including Catholic Community Services and the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County ); the mayors of Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham, and Kirkland; the entire Seattle City Council; Seattle City Attorney Peter Holmes; former federal prosecutor John McKay; current King County Sheriff Steve Strachan ( and his opponent in the upcoming election ); many of our state senators and representatives ( including Mary Helen Roberts, who represents my town, Edmonds, in Olympia ); the editorial boards of The Seattle Times, The Olympian, The Columbian, and The Spokesman-Review; and many other caring people and organizations who have studied this issue.

Most arguments against I-502 are based on the assumption that more people will smoke pot if the law passes.  Some opponents seem to believe that there’s a huge reservoir of people wishing they could ruin their lives smoking pot, if only it were legal.

I believe most people who want to smoke pot already do, and consumption won’t change substantially if I-502 becomes law.  Surveying societies that have decriminalized marijuana, there appears to be no evidence that marijuana use goes up with decriminalization.

For example, in the Netherlands-which is famous for its relaxed marijuana laws-per capita cannabis use is about on par with the US, and use among young people is actually lower than in the US.

Many say marijuana itself isn’t so bad, but it’s dangerous as a gateway drug-”one toke and you’re on your way to heroin addiction.” European societies have learned that the only thing “gateway” about marijuana is its illegality.

When it’s illegal, you have to buy it from criminals on the street who have a vested interest in getting you hooked on something more profitable and more addictive.

In 2001, faced with a troublesome spike in hard drug abuse in their society, Portugal decriminalized the consumption of all drugs.

Ten years later, according to Portuguese government statistics, marijuana use had not gone up ( in fact, cannabis use among Portuguese young adults is about half the European average ), while their hard drug-addicted population has been reduced by half.

Most importantly, drug-related crime is down, freeing up Portuguese law enforcement to focus on other priorities.  And remaining hard drug users see the government as an ally in beating their addiction rather than an enemy out to arrest them.

Many worry about safety on the roads if marijuana is legalized.  Of the 17 states with provisions for medical marijuana, there has been no evidence of an increase in DUI cases involving cannabis.

But just to be sure, I-502 comes with very strict and specific DUI provisions.

And some are concerned that if we legalize, tax, and regulate marijuana, the federal government will override the will of the people of Washington State.

No one knows for sure how the feds will react.  But our country was designed for states to be the incubators of change.  And, in the case of drug policy, there will be no change that doesn’t come from the states.

After all, it was individual states that defied the federal government and made possible the end of alcohol prohibition in the 1930s.  Since the 1990s, individual states ( currently 17 ) have allowed patients to use medicinal marijuana in direct opposition to federal law.  And, when strict parameters are set and followed, the feds have generally stayed out.

I-502 is just taking this to the next stage in a natural evolution of how our society views the challenges of marijuana-both keeping it away from young people, and regulating its responsible adult recreational use.  At the same time, it promises to replace a huge underground industry with a carefully regulated and taxed one.

There are so many reasons to end the prohibition on marijuana.  Whether you’re concerned about the well-being of children, fairness for our minority communities, redirecting money away from criminals and into our state’s coffers, stemming the horrific bloodshed in Mexico, or civil liberties, it is clearly time for a new approach.

When assessing the best way for our society to deal with the challenge of marijuana use, we need to be realistic.

There has never been a drug-free society in the history of humankind.  Marijuana is here to stay.  That’s the reality.  Rather than being hard on drugs or soft on drugs, with I-502 we can finally be smart on drugs.  Please vote yes on I-502.

Source: Edmonds Beacon (WA)
Copyright: 2012 Edmonds Beacon
Contact: 806 5th Street, Mukilteo, WA 98275
Website: http://edmondsbeacon.villagesoup.com/
Author: Rick Steves

A new crime-data analysis has found that 241,000 people in Washington were arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession over the last quarter-century, adding fuel to a campaign seeking to make this state the first to legalize recreational marijuana sales.

The analysis estimates those arrests translated to nearly $306 million in police and court costs — $194 million of it the past decade. African Americans were arrested twice as often as whites for possession in Washington in the past 25 years, even though whites use marijuana more.

Those findings dovetail with arguments for Initiative 502, the state ballot measure that would decriminalize minor marijuana possession and heavily tax sales at state-licensed stores.

Co-author Harry Levine of City University of New York said his group, Marijuana Arrest Research Project, was primarily funded by left-leaning philanthropist George Soros’ Open Society Foundation and received no money from I-502′s major donors.

But the timing is not coincidental, said another co-author, Jon Gettman of Shenandoah University in Virginia, who like Levine supports decriminalizing marijuana possession.

“The public is paying attention to this issue right now. People are watching this debate in Washington state with interest,” Gettman said.

Their analysis mirrors earlier research on racially biased enforcement of marijuana laws in this state, but this report goes deeper. Relying on crime data compiled by the FBI, they found arrests for marijuana possession spiked 178 percent from 1986 to 2010, while the state population grew by 50 percent.

Usage is highest among younger people, and so were arrests: 58 percent of those arrested in the past decade were 24 or younger.

Arrest rates in dense Puget Sound counties, including King, were lower than the state average, and the overall arrest rate dipped after Seattle voted in 2003 to de-emphasize marijuana arrests.

But the rate spiked back up, peaking at 15,065 arrests in 2008. It has been highest in farming counties in Eastern Washington and in Whitman County, home to Washington State University.

“There are cities and counties around the state and the country who generate (federal) revenue through drug-arrest statistics,” said former Seattle police Chief Norm Stamper, a supporter of Initiative 502. “Often time, instead of targeting bigger time traffickers, local law enforcement will target low-hanging fruit,” such as minor marijuana cases.

The report’s findings about arrest rates for whites and minorities were stark: Although whites report, nationwide, using marijuana at the highest rates, African Americans in Washington were arrested 2.9 times more often than whites in the past decade.

At an I-502 debate Wednesday night, the Rev. Leslie David Braxton, an I-502 supporter, made that point. He said there were “more black boys and girls in prison” than in colleges and universities, “not because we smoke more weed than white boys and girls, but because the laws are enforced in a discriminatory pattern.”

The report estimates the cost of marijuana arrests using a 2001 study by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy, putting the figure at $1,500 per arrest.

Based on that estimate, the state has spent $306 million since 1986 on marijuana enforcement — a figure that does not include defense costs or fines, should the defendant be convicted.

The state Institute recently updated the per-arrest cost for police, prosecutors and the court to $871 for misdemeanor cases, according to Steve Aos, Institute director.

But an earlier analysis, by two University of Washington professors, estimated that each misdemeanor arrest costs $3,656 in booking and jail costs.

While it’s difficult to tally all the costs associated with an arrest, Levine said his analysis tried to provide conservative “ballpark estimates,” and said that not all the costs are financial. He noted that arrest reports, which are included in some criminal background checks, cannot be easily expunged and can result in loss of a job or student aid.

“Contrary to what people think, the simple arrests carry enormous consequences way beyond the fines and the night in jail,” said Levine.

He conceded he views marijuana arrests to be “a scandal.”

“Like toxic waste or exploding Pintos, they are something that should be exposed,” he said.

News researcher Miyoko Wolf contributed to this report.

Source: Seattle Times (WA)
Author: Jonathan Martin, Seattle Times Staff Reporter
Published: October 11, 2012
Copyright: 2012 The Seattle Times Company
Contact: opinion@seatimes.com
Website: http://www.seattletimes.com/

It started with a coalition of disgruntled Americans, then a handful of governors took up the cause last year, and
now — for the first time in nearly 20 years — a federal court will
hear oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the classification of
cannabis as a dangerous drug without medical benefits.

In the case, Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration,
the court will be presented with scientific evidence regarding the
medicinal effects of marijuana, and is expected to rule on whether or
not the Drug Enforcement Administration acted appropriately in denying a
petition to reclassify cannabis, filed by a collection of public
interest organizations back in 2002.

"Medical marijuana patients are finally getting their day in court," Joe Elford, chief counsel with ASA, said in a recent statement.
"This is a rare opportunity for patients to confront politically
motivated decision-making with scientific evidence of marijuana’s
medical efficacy."

Under federal law, a schedule I prohibited substance is defined as
having

Medical marijuana has been legal in California since 1996. But today in
San Diego County, many patients are having trouble getting their hands
on the drug.

That’s because all of the openly operating storefronts that sell
marijuana have been shut down. In response, activists in four local
cities have placed measures to authorize medical marijuana dispensaries
on the November ballot.

But even if the measures win, patients might ultimately lose.

Vey Linville has severe emphysema. He needs bottled oxygen to survive.
When Linville was first diagnosed, doctors told him without a double
lung transplant, he’d soon be dead. Linville got his affairs in order.

Then one day when he was searching on the Internet, he discovered a
treatment for breathing problems that used to be widely prescribed in
the 1800s, Tincture of cannabis. Linville found a recipe for it, and
decided to make it himself.

"And I went out and joined one of the clubs, one of the dispensaries,
and was able to buy approximately a quarter pound of concentrates, that I
put in a small amount of alcohol, and consumed over about 10 weeks,"
Linville recalled. "And instead of dying as expected, here I am, six
years later, doing better and better."

These days, Linville uses just a few drops of the tincture in his tea.
But getting any amount of marijuana is difficult, because nearly all
dispensaries in San Diego County have been closed.

Linville said that puts him in a tough spot.

"It’s immoral to make me choose between suffocating and doing business with a drug dealer," Linville argued.

 Linville is with the group Americans for Safe Access. With the help of
some local activists, they’ve placed a measure on the November ballot
in Imperial Beach. It’s a town of 26,000 people that’s the most southern
beach city in California.  

Prop. S would repeal Imperial Beach’s ban on medical marijuana
dispensaries. It would allow dispensaries to open for business under
specific zoning and operational requirements.

Imperial Beach business owner Marcus Boyd is one of the driving forces behind Prop. S.

Boyd became an advocate back in 2008, when his sister was dying in a
local convalescent home. Boyd says marijuana helped relieve her pain.

One night she asked staff for a joint. She wanted them to call Boyd to get one for her.

"They laughed, and a couple of hours later, she passed away," Boyd
remembered. "When I found that out the next morning by going there, I
made a commitment to myself and to her that I would make sure that
people in need are able to find medicine when they need it."

Boyd says Prop. S limits dispensary operating hours and has more than a
dozen other restrictions to protect patients and the community.

Nonetheless, Imperial Beach Mayor Jim Janney and the majority of the City Council are against it.

Janney’s not opposed to medical marijuana per se. He thinks patients
should be able to get it. But Janney said the authors of Prop. S went
overboard.

"If it was as simple as saying I want to allow for three storefronts in
Imperial Beach, they would have said that. But they didn’t do that,"
Janney pointed out. "We could have up to 19 or 20 of them, or more,
depending on how you locate them. I think that’s way too far. I don’t
think that that was good law. I don’t think that’s really the way it
should work."

Imperial Beach voters won’t be the only ones in November to decide whether to allow dispensaries in their town.

Voters in the San Diego County communities of Solana Beach, Del Mar and Lemon Grove will also weigh in.

But even if these measures pass, there are no guarantees that any medical marijuana dispensaries will be allowed to operate.

That’s because the U.S. attorneys throughout the state have been
aggressive in enforcing the federal ban on marijuana. Over the past
year, they’ve shut down dispensaries in a number of cities, including
Oakland, Los Angeles and San Diego.

In July, U.S. Attorney Laura Duffy sent a letter to the city attorney
in Del Mar. The letter said city employees who conducted activities
mandated by their dispensary ordinance would not be immune from federal
prosecution.

Duffy wouldn’t agree to be interviewed for this story.

Despite the fed’s position, Vey Linville said there are tens of
thousands of sick people in San Diego County who could benefit from
medical marijuana.

"People with AIDS, people with cancer, that really are entitled to safe
access to this medicine, as they would be to any other," Linville said.

After pressure from activists, the Los Angeles City Council has decided
to overturn a ban on medical marijuana dispensaries it had approved
just months ago.

That means an estimated 1,000 storefronts in the city are operating totally unregulated.

Medical marijuana users will get a long-awaited day in the nation’s second-highest federal court next week, when California-based activists argue for looser regulations.

While voters in Washington and two other Western states are preparing to vote on legalizing recreational pot use, the California activists hope to redefine how the federal government classifies the drug. The case, years in the making, could turn federal law enforcement on its head.

"It’s symbolic, and it’s extremely important," Kris Hermes, spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, said in a telephone interview Friday, "and it will force the federal government to rethink how it addresses this issue."

The drug regulation dispute will be taken up Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which is influential because it oversees many federal agency decisions. The half-hour oral argument, pitting Americans for Safe Access against the Obama administration’s Justice Department, is the latest step in a drug regulation case begun a decade ago.

Based in Oakland, Calif., home base for the nation’s medical marijuana movement, Americans for Safe Access is challenging the Drug Enforcement Administration’s continued classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Schedule I drugs, which also include the likes of heroin, are officially deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no currently accepted medical use.

The DEA last year upheld the agency’s strict marijuana classification following extended review, and the Justice Department argues the appellate court need not second-guess this decision.

"There was no available evidence of adequate, well-controlled studies demonstrating marijuana’s safety and effectiveness as a medicine and no consensus among experts as to these issues," Justice Department attorneys Lena Watkins and Anita J. Gay advised the appellate court in a legal brief. "The enactment of state laws allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes did not constitute the required science-based evidence."

Watkins and Gay further cited the "extensive illicit domestic and international trafficking of marijuana as evidence of the widespread use and abuse" of the drug.

An estimated 16.7 million U.S. residents currently use marijuana, according to the most recent federal surveys. Among 12th-graders, an estimated one in five had used pot within the past month, according to a 2010 survey.

One user has been Parrish, Fla., resident Cathy Jordan, who says marijuana relieves the debilitating symptoms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Another user has been Air Force veteran Michael Krawitz, a Virginia resident in chronic pain from a car accident. A third has been Rick Steeb, a San Jose, Calif., resident in his early 60s who says marijuana has eased the pain of glaucoma.

"I am afraid to cultivate sufficient amounts of marijuana for this purpose because I fear a federal criminal prosecution for doing so," Steeb said in a legal declaration. "If marijuana were rescheduled, I believe I would be afforded a medical necessity defense."

Jordan, Steeb and Krawitz are the human faces put forth on the medical marijuana petition, but their personal stories will likely remain in the background during the Tuesday morning court hearing.

Instead, the three judges – two appointed by Democratic presidents, one appointed by a Republican – will zero in on several key legal disputes.

The first crucial test is whether the medical marijuana advocates have the standing, or legal right, to file the lawsuit in the first place. The Justice Department argues the advocates can’t show they suffered the kind of harm needed to bring a case.

If the judges agree, they can dismiss the challenge and avoid the trickier question of whether the DEA acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" in rejecting the original 2002 petition seeking reclassification of marijuana. It took five years for the Department of Health and Human Services to complete its evaluation and recommendations, and another four years for the DEA to issue its decision.

Advocates say regulators ignored several hundred peer-reviewed studies on the efficacy of medical marijuana, as well as the medical marijuana laws passed by Alaska, California, Washington and 13 other states.

"They just blew it on the science," Americans for Safe Access attorney Joseph D. Elford said in an interview Friday.

The appellate court will probably not rule on removing marijuana from the restrictive Schedule I status. It could, however, order the DEA to take a more in-depth look at the available evidence. If this happens, advocates maintain marijuana could be classified as a potentially useful drug that can be safely used under medical supervision.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

Next Tuesday, marijuana
will have its day in court because the United States Court of Appeals
is set to hear arguments about the drug’s therapeutic and medicinal
effects. But some doctors, like one of my next guests, disagrees with
the government’s ban on medical use of marijuana, pointing to the drug’s
ability to suppress nausea, stimulate the appetite, relieve pain,
improve sleep, even fight cancer cells, in test tubes at least.

Is
the science on cannabis compelling enough to convince federal
officials? And have we done the rigorous science on marijuana that’s
required of all drugs to get it to your pharmacy? Dr. Donald Abrams is
chief of oncology at San Francisco General Hospital. He’s also a
professor of medicine at the University of California in San Francisco.
He joins us by phone. Welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY, Dr. Abrams.

DR. DONALD ABRAMS: Thank you, good to be here.

FLATOW:
You’re welcome. Dr. Bertha Madras is professor of psychology –
psychobiology, I’m sorry, in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Med
School in Southborough, Massachusetts. She joins us by phone. Welcome
to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

DR. BERTHA MADRAS: Thank you, good afternoon.

FLATOW:
Good afternoon to you. Dr. Abrams, do you think it’s time? Do you think
the evidence is there that the federal government should OK cannabis
for general use?

ABRAMS: Well, I mean, let’s
take a step back. Cannabis was on the formulary of the United States
until 1942, when it was removed. So cannabis, which has been a medicine
for thousands of years in other parts of the world, was available in
this country, again, until ’42, when it was taken off our pharmacopoeia.
So yes, I think that the Institute of Medicine in their last report in
1999 suggested that cannabis and cannabinoids, their active components,
have use in treatment of nausea, vomiting, pain and loss of appetite.

And
as a cancer doctor, I see patients every day, people who are
benefitting from the use of cannabis. The problem is the government does
not allow cannabis to be studied as a therapeutic agent because the
only legal source is the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and they have
a congressional mandate only to study substances abused as substances
of abuse. So that’s a bit of a catch-22.

FLATOW: Dr. Madras, would you agree with that?

MADRAS:
Frankly I disagree, and here are my reasons why. Number one is, yes,
marijuana was removed from the pharmacopeia in the late 1930s, in fact,
but because it was found that the safety and efficacy issues did not
reach the bar that was necessary for drug approval.

The
fact that Dr. Abrams claims that we cannot study cannabis in scientific
studies is disingenuous because the Center for Medicinal Cannabis
Research, of which he’s a part of, in California, has conducted and has
received millions of dollars from the California Legislature to study
smoked marijuana as a medicine.

And as of
today, I have looked at their site. They have precisely four published
manuscripts on the medicinal uses of cannabis for which the Proposition
15 approved marijuana and a number of other publications that bear no
relationship to these clinical trials.

So the
clinical trials can go on. The marijuana is available for them.
Cannabinoids are being studied and synthesized at horrendously large
rates by medicinal chemists, and yet…

FLATOW:
I have to interrupt you. We’ll get back to you, Dr. Madras. We have to
take a break. Stay with us. Also Dr. Abrams, we’ll be right back after
this break. I’m Ira Flatow, this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW:
This is SCIENCE FRIDAY. I’m Ira Flatow. We’re talking this hour about
legalization of cannabis and the use of cannabis, otherwise marijuana,
in research studies. When I interrupted Dr. Bertha Madras, she was
talking about the fact that there were lots of studies in California and
plenty of samples of cannabis to get if you needed to study it. Dr.
Abrams, how do you answer that?

ABRAMS: Yeah,
so the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research was set up in California
for that reason, to fund studies to look at the potential effectiveness
of cannabis. And I did two, one that demonstrated in patients with HIV
and painful nerve damage cannabis was better than placebo in relieving
their pain.

And I also did a study funded
actually by NIDA because it was a safety study to show that it was safe
for patients on chronic opiates to add cannabis to their regimen. It did
not change the level of opiates in their bloodstream, and if anything,
it may have improved their pain relief.

FLATOW: So you think there’s enough evidence, then, that the courts should approve it?

ABRAMS:
Well, no, you know, again, evidence, that’s what I’m saying. It’s
difficult to do clinical trials looking at cannabis as a therapy because
of the catch-22 that NIDA, you know, is preferentially supplying their
cannabis to studies that look at its danger.

So
the evidence, you know, clinically the evidence is there, and I do
disagree that the reason that it was removed from the pharmacopeia, the
American Medical Association in 1937, after the introduction of the
Cannabis Tax Act, was – stood alone in saying that there is no evidence
that cannabis is dangerous and that this act would impede the ability to
research it for its effectiveness.

And then
it was removed from the pharmacopeia and subjected to Schedule 1, and,
you know, the main target in this country’s failed war on drugs.

FLATOW: So you think there are not enough resources to conduct the clinical studies that would be needed?

ABRAMS:
Well, not many people want to study cannabis. It’s sort of a difficult
thing in your career because, you know, I think the more – science is
not driving the train, that’s what I’ll say. I mean, the more evidence
that people accumulate – we now have three studies demonstrating
cannabis’ utility in peripheral neuropathy, which is a very challenging
medical condition to treat.

Oftentimes people
are put on opiates, and then their life is one string of opiates after
another. Better – cannabis, this is a flower we’re talking about it.
It’s a flower. It’s not a dangerous substance like the opiates that I
prescribe and others prescribe for patients living with cancer and pain.

FLATOW:
Dr. Madras, would you acknowledge that cannabis and cannabinoids have
some therapeutic effects like Dr. Abrams mentioned?

MADRAS:
I acknowledge that cannabinoids may have some therapeutic effects. I
disagree with Dr. Abrams vehemently on the thought that one’s hands are
tied in doing the science. Once again, the Centers for Medicinal
Cannabis…

ABRAMS: Oh don’t repeat yourself on that, that’s silly.

MADRAS: Had all money available to do with – and they have…

ABRAMS: Three million dollars a year for three years.

MADRAS:
But let me please finish. They had to cancel five studies because they
could not recruit enough patients. One of the criteria for recruiting
patients is that they had to be experienced marijuana users. How many
elderly cancer patients in this day and age are experienced marijuana
users? They also are not allowed to drive because there was fear of
liability in case they got into a car accident because they were under
the influence.

So there – so what Dr. Abrams
should say is that there was money, there was cannabis available for the
studies. Why did five of the major studies that they had proposed at
the onset of this program, why were they canceled?

FLATOW: Dr. Abrams, any answer?

ABRAMS:
Well, I mean, you know, again, all of my studies were done in the
in-patient clinical research center so we could observe the patients and
make sure they weren’t diverting this Schedule 1 substance. And cancer
patients, I don’t think, are that enthusiastic about spending, you know,
some of the remaining days of their lives in the hospital doing a
research study.

Plus there was always a
concern that the cannabis that NIDA provides is not particularly potent
and that because we live in California, where we’ve had cannabis
available as a medicine for patients since 1996, if patients really
wanted to use it, they could.

And as a cancer
doctor, ma’am, many patients in my age group, who grew up in the ’60s
and ’70s, with cancer are cannabis-experienced people. So that is not a
problem. The problem is the closing of the dispensaries now by the
federal government in California, when we voted for it in 1996, is not
allowing my elderly patients access to their medicine.

MADRAS:
And NIDA provides marijuana cigarettes at 3.5 and seven percent THC. Do
you think that you need more than that, especially considering one of
the studies that came out of the CMCR that said that at seven percent
the side effects were quite above the boundary of acceptable side
effects, meaning psychoactive dizziness, confusion and so on?

So
my feeling is that the doses that are available for this research are
in fact available, but once you get into seven percent or six percent
cannabis, you do have side effects that have to be reported in clinical
trials, far beyond that boundary of what are…

ABRAMS:
Yeah. Again, I hate to disagree with you, but the cannabis available in
dispensaries averages from 10 to 15 percent, and legal cannabis in The
Netherlands is 14 percent that you get from the pharmacy. So three and
seven percent is not a huge amount, and I think patients need to
self-titrate.

It’s very different from other
medicines, you know, where you tell the patient try it and see what
works for you. You know, if it…

MADRAS: But that’s not how the FDA works.

ABRAMS: Well, of course not. This is not…

MADRAS:
The FDA requires and insists that one does a window of therapeutic
efficacy compared with a window of a side effect profile that may render
a drug unacceptable in the market. And if you do a full-dose response
curve, you will find that past a certain percentage of THC, a person is
quite incompetent.

ABRAMS: Well, that’s
absolutely correct, same with alcohol. You know, I mean, I personally
believe that this is a flower, and it should be regulated like tobacco
or alcohol. And, you know, trying to get FDA approval for a medicine
that’s been a medicine for thousands of years and was on the U.S.
pharmacopeia until 1942, when it was removed by an act of Congress
submitted by a racist, you know, what are we doing in this country.

This is a flower. We’re spending $4 billion a year on the war on drugs and incarcerating 180,000 Americans.

MADRAS: Well, you know, ephedrine from the ma huang plant…

ABRAMS: Oh, you could give me all the examples you want. I’m not in favor of cocaine, either.

MADRAS: Pardon? Most of our medications, at least 30 percent, are originally derived from plants.

ABRAMS: Right.

MADRAS:
The active ingredients were isolated, such as cocaine, such as
digitalis, such as aspirin, such as morphine. They were isolated. They
were studied in isolation in order to determine how fast they get into
the brain, how fast they get into the blood…

ABRAMS: That’s the Western pharmaceutically dominated paradigm, you know…

MADRAS: And also what the…

FLATOW: I’m going to jump in here. I’m going to jump in, and I’m going to ask…

ABRAMS: There are thousands of years of research where people use the whole plant as medicine.

FLATOW: Dr. Abrams, do you think it’s possible to create studies that would satisfy the FDA requirements?

ABRAMS:
I’m sorry, I do not. I continue to do this work, but I don’t think that
this is going to happen in my lifetime unless other people start
looking at the ridiculousness of our current policies in this country.
I’m sorry.

FLATOW: Ridiculous meaning what?

ABRAMS:
Well, this is a flower. You know, I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. I
went to Brown University and Stanford University School of Medicine.
Cannabis was my substance of choice, not alcohol. And I’m very happy
with the person that I’ve become today, and I would be very different if
alcohol was what I used for relaxation.

FLATOW: Dr. Madras, have you done studies on cannabis?

MADRAS:
I have done a few limited studies on isolated cannabinoids, not in
patients, in preclinical research. I have studied the literature
extensively because I am very interested in the scientific issues, not
as much the political issues.

FLATOW: Well, do you believe that the studies…

ABRAMS: Science does not drive the politics…

MADRAS: I believe…

FLATOW: Dr. Madras, do you believe that studies can be done that would satisfy the FDA?

MADRAS: I certainly do.

ABRAMS: Oh, my goodness.

MADRAS: I think that…

FLATOW: And who would do them?

MADRAS: Well, (unintelligible)…

ABRAMS: Good question.

MADRAS: …and I have no, you know, full disclosure, I have absolutely no outside funding from any sources.

FLATOW: So who should do this? Who should get the funding to do this?

MADRAS: So drug companies – RGW Pharmaceuticals in England, they’ve approved an inhaled form of…

ABRAMS: It’s not inhaled, dear. It’s sprayed under the tongue.

MADRAS:
…THC combined with cannabidiol, which does not have psychoactive
effects but therapeutic effects and different types of formularies that
can deliver a reasonable bolus of active…

FLATOW: Well, Great Britain…

MADRAS:
…ingredients to the brain would satisfy the FDA. At this point, the
real issue is the relationship between psychoactive effects and
therapeutic effects. The faster a drug gets into the brain, the more
addictive it – more…

ABRAMS: No. Don’t start with addictive.

MADRAS:
…addictive potential and the more its psychoactive effects. And this
is the problem with a substance such as marijuana smoke. The other issue
is: Do we want smoked marijuana as a delivery system for medications?
It has between 60 and 80 cannabinoids in it of uneven quantities because
every one produces different ratios…

FLATOW: OK.

MADRAS: …of all of them.

FLATOW:
I have to stop you from filibustering. Let me get another question in
here. Dr. Abrams, for people who already have problems, health problems,
what about the smoking issue? Isn’t smoking a bad solution?

ABRAMS:
Yeah. My friend and colleague Donald Tashkin at the University of
California, Los Angeles has spent 40 years of his career doing studies
for NIDA looking for the danger of inhaling cannabis and basically finds
that chronic users may have a little bronchitis. Actually, it appears
from his (unintelligible) study of 1,365 patients with aerodigestive
malignancies in Los Angeles that regular cannabis use decreased the risk
of lung cancer. A recent study in young people followed for 20 years
show that those who regularly use cannabis had better pulmonary function
tests than those who didn’t.

So there are
other ways to deliver cannabis than smoking, and we’ve investigated a
vaporizer, and vaporization is now widely used by patients here in
California as a smokeless delivery system. But in my opinion, smoking is
not that dangerous, either, and I’m sure that will get some
disagreement from my colleague.

FLATOW: A lot
of people think that it’s the high that you get from smoking marijuana
that is the therapeutic effect. Is that correct?

ABRAMS:
I think that the cannabinoids – we have two receptors in our bodies,
the CB1, which is in the brain, and the CB2, which is in the immune
system. And the activation of these receptors causes chemical reactions
in cells which have many different effects besides the psychoactivity.
As my colleague said, another cannabinoid, cannabidiol is very potently
analgesic and anti-inflammatory without being psychoactive. So the
concern that there’s 60 or 70 other cannabinoids in the plant is exactly
something, I think, is a good thing.

As a
student of traditional Chinese medicine, a medicine that’s been
practiced for 5,000 years, they frequently use the whole plant instead
of following the Western pharmaceutically industry dominated paradigm of
isolating the active component, make it into a pill that people swallow
and charging large amounts of money. So I think that the cannabinoids,
as well as the other components of the plant – terpenoids and flavonoids
– all have the potential for medical benefits.

FLATOW:
All right. Let me remind everybody that this is SCIENCE FRIDAY from
NPR. Let me ask you, Dr. Madras, one more time, do you think there are
studies that can be done in the United States that would convince the
FDA, and who would do them?

MADRAS: I think
there are studies. I think we have to, A, alter the delivery system to
remove smoke. Marijuana smoke has ammonia up to 20 times greater than
tobacco smoke. It has hydrogen cyanide and nitric oxide and some
aromatic amines that are three to five times higher in marijuana than
tobacco smoke. And there are many other problems associated with
marijuana smoke. So what are the criteria? One should change the method
of delivery…

FLATOW: Who will do…

MADRAS: …and (unintelligible)…

FLATOW: Who will do the study? Ma’am. Ma’am, who will do the study?

MADRAS: …(unintelligible) change the method of delivery as well as study and…

FLATOW: Dr. Madras, who will…

MADRAS: …focus on single cannabinoids.

FLATOW: Dr. Madras, who will do these studies?

MADRAS: Well, there are pharmaceutical companies that are quite interested in…

FLATOW: Have they – will they…

ABRAMS: It’s a flower. Nobody can patent a flower.

FLATOW: Will they…

ABRAMS: Nobody can patent a flower. They’re not going to make any money.

FLATOW: Who’s going to…

MADRAS: They can patent methods of delivery. They can patent single isolated cannabinoids. They can (unintelligible)…

ABRAMS: And they’ve done that. We have that on the market.

MADRAS: They can (unintelligible).

ABRAMS: That’s called dronabinol and nabilone. Those are available for patients. I’ll tell you, as a cancer doctor, I’m…

MADRAS:
Yes. Generic drugs are very, very lucrative for companies such as Teva
Pharmaceuticals. They can be made as generics as well.

FLATOW: Who will? Can is a large population. Who is doing it and will do it and pay for it?

ABRAMS:
Can I – there’s no answer to that, so I can just say as a cancer doctor
now for 30 years in a state where we have tolerance to the use of
cannabis as medicine, that a day doesn’t go by when I don’t see a cancer
patient who has nausea, loss of appetite, pain, depression and
insomnia. And I could recommend one medicine to that patient and instead
of writing prescriptions for five or six different pharmaceuticals that
may interact with each other or with the patient’s chemotherapy. And
this is a medicine that my cancer patients can grow if they want to.

I
ask all of my patients: What brings you joy? And the percentage of
people living and, in fact, dying with cancer who tell me gardening
brings them joy is not insubstantial because bringing life out of the
ground is a pleasure. And if this life that people bring out of the
ground is also their medicine, why don’t we let them have it? The number
of patients who come to me saying they were given narcotics and at
their – the end of life and they can’t communicate with their family,
and then they wean themselves off of their opiates with cannabis so that
they could have a more pleasurable interaction in their final days of
life. Why do we deny people this medicine?

MADRAS:
Well, why is it that the recommendations currently are that serotonin
5-HT3 antagonists are much better at preventing chemotherapy-induced
nausea than marijuana?

ABRAMS: Yeah, I’m not going to – it’s not a question about ranking, but I think…

MADRAS: Why is that there are so many alternatives now to smoking marijuana, sending the wrong message to kids…

ABRAMS: I hope you never have to repeat chemotherapy.

MADRAS: …than what you’re claiming? I’m afraid…

ABRAMS:
Right. But what about Melissa Etheridge? She’s the one that went
public, saying she could not have tolerated her chemotherapy for her
breast cancer if she didn’t use cannabis. We have many medicines, but if
they don’t work and cannabis does, why deprive people of their
medicine?

FLATOW: All right. I have to stop
it right there. Dr. Bertha Madras, professor of psychobiology at the
Department of Psychiatry at Harvard. Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of
oncology, San Francisco General Hospital. Thank you both for taking time
to be with us.

ABRAMS: Sure.

FLATOW:
We’re going to take a break. After the break, tracking the ozone hole.
It’s not just over Antarctic anymore. Stay with us. I’m Ira Flatow. This
is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

After what most consider an unfair reclassification of marijuana as a Schedule I substance, a move to impact federal cannabis
policy has finally been granted its day in court. On October 16, a
United States Court of Appeals will hear the openings for the case of Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration
in which the interest group ASA will push for the federal government