For those who hadn’t heard, the FDA put out a one-page statement on 4/20 pronouncing once again that marijuana has no medical value. This time, however, they’ve received quite a backlash. Perhaps most importantly, a bipartisan committee of 24 members of the house has called on the agency to explain its reasoning and offer scientific proof for its position. But the FDA’s woes don’t end there. Below are links and short snippets from a pretty diversified range of dissenters: A CU law professor, the New York Times, Scientific American, and the Economist.
In reviewing some drugs, FDA practices twisted science
This article, written by a University of Colorado law professor, parries two drugs – Redux and Cannabis. The former was given the OK by the FDA (after hearing from severally highly-paid doctors), and the second, marijuana, they have repeatedly found to have no medical value. The difference between the two: one caused over 1,200 deaths.
Obviously, that one is not marijuana. Marijuana has never killed anyone, and it’s still a schedule 1 narcotic, meaning doctors can’t prescribe it. Counter-intuitively, cocaine, methamphetamine, and morphine are not schedule 1 drugs…
“The Politics of Pot.” It’s the title of this week’s New York Times article on the subject. And it’s exactly what the story should be about – because the FDA doesn’t appear to be concerned in the least with any of the scientific or medical data surrounding the issue:
Ordinarily, when the F.D.A. addresses a thorny issue, it convenes a panel of experts who wade through the latest evidence and then render an opinion as to whether a substance is safe and effective to use. This time the agency simply issued a skimpy one-page statement asserting that “no sound scientific studies” supported the medical use of marijuana.
That assertion is based on an evaluation by federal agencies in 2001 that justified the government’s decision to tightly regulate marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act. But it appears to flout the spirit of a 1999 report from the Institute of Medicine, a unit of the National Academy of Sciences.
Indeed, Scientific American takes that point a few steps further:
Medical Marijuana’s Catch-22: Scientific American Observations
As a 1995 editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association said, “We are not asking readers for immediate agreement with our affirmation that marijuana is medically useful, but we hope they will do more to encourage open and legal exploration of its potential.”
After almost a decade of little progress, we reiterate that sentiment.
Medical marijuana is caught in a classic Catch-22 situation: It is banned because the federal government dismisses the evidence of therapeutic benefit as insufficient. But because marijuana is banned, scientists can’t easily gather more evidence to make the case. And new drugs based on marijuana are casualties of the same policies. Meanwhile, patients continue to suffer despite strong evidence that work in this area could lead to better medicines.How does this seem like a good arrangement? Seriously, what are the feds smoking?
Then, from a completely different perspective, the Economist throws in their two cents:
Marijuana is medically useful, whether politicians like it or not
Once available, a well-formulated and scientifically tested drug should knock a herbal medicine into a cocked hat. No one would argue for chewing willow bark when aspirin is available. But, in the meantime, there is unmet medical need that, as the Institution of Medicine report pointed out, could easily and cheaply be met—if the American government cared more about suffering and less about posturing.
Hoping facts matter,
Jonthon
