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Washington,
DC: Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Administrative Law Judge
Mary Ellen Bittner ruled Monday that the private production of cannabis for
research purposes is "in the public interest." Her ruling affirms that the DEA
in 2004 improperly rejected an
application from the University of Massachusetts (UMass) at Amherst to
manufacture cannabis for FDA-approved research.
Bittner opined: "I
conclude that granting Respondent's application would not be inconsistent with
the Single Convention, that there would be minimal risk of diversion of
marijuana resulting from Respondent's registration, that there is currently an
inadequate supply of marijuana available for research purposes, that competition
in the provision of marijuana for such purposes is inadequate, and that
Respondent has complied with applicable laws and has never been convicted of any
violation of any law pertaining to controlled substances. I therefore find that
Respondent's registration to cultivate marijuana would be in the public
interest."
Currently, all federally approved research on marijuana must
utilize cannabis supplied by and grown under contract with the US National
Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). The UMass-Amherst
proposal sought to provide clinical investigators with an alternative,
independent source of cannabis for FDA-approved clinical trials.
NORML
Executive Director Allen St. Pierre praised the decision. "Judge Bittner's
ruling is an important first step toward breaking the US government's
long-standing monopoly regarding the cultivation of research-grade cannabis. Clinical investigators and drug development researchers who no longer wish to
conduct trials using NIDA's inferior strains of cannabis may one day have access
to other, legal alternatives."
In recent years, several US researchers
have criticized NIDA's unwillingness to provide cannabis for clinical protocols
seeking to investigate the drug's medical uses. In 2004, the agency's director
Nora
Volkow stated that it is "not NIDA's mission to study the medical uses of
marijuana."
NORML Board Member Rick
Doblin --- Executive Director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) --- one of the respondents in the case, said: "This is a major step to getting
us to do the scientific research that the government has been blocking for the
past 30 years. If the government says no [to the judge's ruling,] the hypocrisy
of their approach will help fuel efforts for [additional] state medical
marijuana reforms."
The DEA has 20 days to challenge Judge Bittner's
decision. The decision then goes before DEA Deputy Administrator Michele
Leonhart, who can still elect to set aside the ruling. A spokesman for the
agency told the Associated Press that they are reviewing the
opinion.
For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre,
NORML Executive Director, or Paul Armentano, Senior Policy Analyst, at (202)
483-5500. Text of Judge Bittner's ruling is available online at: http://www.maps.org/ALJfindings.PDF. Additional information is available on today's edition of
NORML's daily AudioStash at:http://www.normlaudiostash.com.
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