Con

David Borden, Executive Director of The Drug Reform Coordination Network, wrote ProCon.org in 2002:

“The FDA was intended to control new medicines, not medicines that had already been in use for hundreds or thousands of years. Morphine wasn’t approved by the FDA. Marijuana should not have been removed from the pharmacopoeia in the first place, and the AMA opposed its banning.”

David Borden additionally wrote on Apr. 21, 2004: “Advocates have resorted to initiatives and lobbying because the government has blocked most medical marijuana research. Studies involving marijuana require a license from the DEA as well as a legal marijuana source.

The only current legal domestic source for marijuana is the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), however, NIDA has been unwilling to provide marijuana to studies which it is not also funding. DEA has also refused to grant licenses to allow legal marijuana imports for medical research. The same officials who cite insufficient research to meet the FDA’s standards for drug approval have played a role in making sure that the research doesn’t take place.

Recently some studies have been allowed, but not enough to allow the FDA process to proceed at a reasonable pace.”

2002; Apr. 21, 2004