Bush Adm. Must Allow Medical Marijuana Research

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union applauded a ruling issued by a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration judge that recommends ending the federal government's sixty-five year monopoly on the supply of marijuana available for Food and Drug Administration-approved medical research.

The ACLU represents University of Massachusetts-Amherst Professor Lyle Craker, who petitioned the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for a license to grow research-grade marijuana for use in privately-funded studies that aim to develop the plant into a legal, prescription medicine. The DEA judge ruled that it is in the public interest to end the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) monopoly on the supply of marijuana that can be used in Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved research.

"For too long the DEA has inappropriately inserted politics into a regulatory process that should be left to the FDA and medical science," said Allen Hopper, an attorney with the ACLU Drug Law Reform Project. "We are pleased that the judge has recommended an end to the federal government's blockade of medical marijuana research."

The DEA must now either accept or reject the court's recommendation, and scientists, doctors and medical marijuana patients nationwide joined the ACLU in urging the agency to comply with the court's finding and halt federal obstruction of medical marijuana research.

Dr. Betty Voices Some Strong Views on Marijuana.

Anyone who knows the history of marijuana understands how politics moved in and Congress declared war on a plant. Mr. Dupont's synthetic fabrics were about to hit the market and getting rid of the cannibus plant (hemp) as a source for cloth and rope created a much bigger market for his new product: nylon.

At the same time, a pharmaceutical company was gearing up to introduce tranquilizers. Obviously, pot had historically been the best tranquilizer available until the US government, using scare tactics, declared marijuana illegal. With the help of William Randolph Hearst and his many newspapers, they successfully ran a smear campaign about the evils of pot.

The "Refer Madness" campaign of the "30's and "40's was similar to our current war on terror starting in 2003 when Billionaire Rupert Murdoch and Fox News took over where Hearst left off. They and Bush's neo-cons sold the American people a pack of lies so they could declare war on Iraq, an oil-rich third-world country. Besides getting control of the oil, they correctly figured they would make a bundle for the military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us against many years ago.

I say hooray for the DEA judge who had the courage to rule that it is in the public interest to end the federal government's blockade of medical marijuana research. Several friends o mine who live in San Francisco can buy legal marijuana to deal with body pain, depression and insomnia. I'm looking forward to having a nice cup of legal marijuana tea just before bedtime in the near future. So fire up your bong and hold the image that the peacemakers of our world will prevail.

Betty Dodson, Ph.D.

excerpted from:
DEA Judge Calls for Government to End
Obstruction of Medical Marijuana Research
ACLU Mar. 1, 2007