Science Up in Smoke: The Catch-22 of Marijuana Research [View all]

[n2doc]

by DANIEL HONAN

Marijuana has "high abuse potential" and no "currently accepted medical use." That is how marijuana is classified by federal bureaucrats, even though that view is very much out of sync with the opinions of many doctors and scientists. This designation is the legacy of the forty year old Controlled Substances Act, and this designation will not change any time soon, thanks to a ruling this week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The appeals court ruled in favor of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which had chosen not to review scientific evidence in support of the reclassification of marijuana, which is currently a Schedule 1 agent, the most restrictive category for a controlled substance.

This discrepancy between public policy and the scientific community is a well-documented public health predicament as an estimated one million patients use marijuana as a treatment every year. This discrepancy has also muddled public policy because 18 states have made medical marijuana legal. So what are law enforcement officials to do? How can the medical community be expected to make progress?

When confusion reigns, you cannot expect good outcomes. So the question to answer is this: why does such confusion regin? As Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance tells Big Think, marijuana occupies a special status in American culture and our legal system. This status is based on the belief that this substance is far more dangerous than any scientific evidence has borne out.

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http://bigthink.com/think-tank/science-up-in-smoke-the-catch-22-of-marijuana-research