Limiting Legalized Marijuana Mccaslin Pushed WSU Study, In Case Medicinal Use Ok’d
If Washington ever follows the lead of California and Arizona, legalizing marijuana as medicine, how could the drug be kept out of the hands of healthy people who just want to get high?
That’s the focus of a nine-month study, commissioned by the state Legislature, at Washington State University.
The bill was co-sponsored by conservative Sen. Bob McCaslin, R-Spokane, a 70-year-old legislator whose wife, Wanda, died in 1995 from cancer.
The $70,000 study, which will be complete in about six weeks, will likely suggest the state try to ease federal restrictions on marijuana research.
“I really don’t know if it will benefit any of them (sick people). We need to know more,” said Mahmoud Abdel-Monem, dean of WSU’s College of Pharmacy, which is doing the research. “There have been some studies in the past, but none of them have been conclusive.”
The study will also include specific plans for growing marijuana in Washington, if lawmakers decide they want to go that far. Researchers suggest a five-acre farm, costing $1.5 million, with guard towers, electric eyes and double fences to guard the crop. It would cost about $500,000 per year to guard the marijuana and track it to prevent misuse.
Some studies suggest marijuana eases the pain and nausea from cancer chemotherapy and radiation treatment, as well as AIDS.
The drug is also believed to be helpful in treating glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.
The only federally approved marijuana farm in the nation is a 5-acre plot at the University of Mississippi, where researchers have grown the bushy plant for nearly three decades. The farm, run by the National Institute of Drug Abuse, supplies marijuana cigarettes to a handful of sick people. It once supplied marijuana for medical research.
That stopped four years ago for political reasons, according to Abdel-Monem. He said researchers, although they can get approval from the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency to do marijuana research, cannot legally get marijuana.
The same is true in California and Arizona. On Nov. 5, voters there approved allowing chronically or terminally ill people to use the drug. But growing or possessing marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It’s a so-called Schedule 1 drug, classified as having no medical use and having a high potential for abuse. LSD and heroin are also Schedule 1 drugs.
The new laws in California and Arizona stipulate that a doctor must recommend or prescribe the marijuana. In the wake of the vote, some ill people are reportedly forming clubs and selecting a member to grow the marijuana.
Pharmaceutical companies have developed a synthetic form of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. But since the THC is partially filtered out by the liver, it’s not as effective as smoking, injecting or absorbing the drug through a membrane under the tongue, Abdel-Monem said.
One possible way to minimize misuse of medical marijuana would be to provide it in suppository form, he said.
“That’s not going to be viewed as a recreational use,” he predicted.
WSU’s study has been limited mainly to studying literature and interviewing legal marijuana farmers in Mississippi and the Netherlands. Since the subject is so highly charged, the final step in the study will be a panel discussion between medical marijuana proponents and foes.
“There are very strong advocates on both sides of the aisle,” Abdel-Monem said.
Word of the research has also triggered many calls to the College of Pharmacy, he said.
“I’m trying to keep a low profile. When this first came out, I was getting at least a dozen calls a day from people wanting to know if they could get marijuana,” said Abdel-Monem. “A guy was growing it in his basement and wanted to know if I wanted to use it.”
He said no.
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