Co-Director at UC San Diego's Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research Reveals Medicinal Use in Contrast to DEA's Position

By Uprising Radio |  July 15, 2011

The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently ruled that Marijuana has “no accepted medical use.”

This came in a long-overdue response to The Cannabis Rescheduling Petition, which was successfully circulated in 2002.

The petition outlines a scientific argument for why the federal government must legally recognize the accepted medical use of Cannabis (marijuana) and regulate it in the same fashion as pharmaceutical drugs. The DEA’s hardline, and by extension, the Obama Administration’s was made apparent in a Memorandum for United States Attorneys from Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole dated June 29, 2011.

The memo states, “Persons who are in the business of cultivating, selling or distributing marijuana, and those who knowingly facilitate such activities, are in violation of the Controlled Substances Act, regardless of state law.”

The state of California in 1996 was the first to legalize the medicinal use of Marijuana to those who had doctor’s prescriptions. Under the Bush administration, Federal DEA agents famously raided California dispensaries – even those that were legal under the state – for violating federal laws. In 2009, the Obama administration announced that it would stop those raids except in cases where traffickers “falsely masqueraded” as dispensaries.

This latest decision is a blow to advocates of medical marijuana and legalization efforts. They claim marijuana has clear medical benefits, and is no more dangerous than legal prescription medication for pain management, sleep aids, appetite stimulants, etc. Currently marijuana is a ‘Schedule I’ substance, restricted solely for research purposes.

However, there is a dearth of definitive studies on the medical benefits of Marijuana.

Some critics claim marijuana research is being prevented by federal policies.

In the United States, the DEA has approved only 109 researchers to perform “bona fide” research with marijuana.

Only fourteen people are approved to conduct research with smoked marijuana on human subjects.

There are a few organizations like the University of California San Diego’s Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research (CMCR), that are conducting and publishing research on the medical benefits of Marijuana.

GUEST: Dr JH Atkinson, Co-Director of the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, for Thursday, July 14th at 11am Pacific.

To hear this program on Uprising Radio, please click here, or visit www.kpfk.org.

Find out more at www.cmcr.ucsd.edu.