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Cannabis plant in black light
Anyone raised on a steady diet of Reefer Madness and the well-honed tradition of vilifying cannabis in the media probably assumes that marijuana’s harmful effects are well-documented, by now. After all, marijuana has been banned for nearly a century, and more than 600,000 Americans are arrested every year for possession of personal-use amounts. Cannabis is even categorized as a Schedule I drug, alongside heroin and other potentially deadly drugs. Surely, it ought to be at least somewhat harmful … right? Wrong, says the country’s foremost drug expert.
“There’s no evidence to my knowledge that occasional marijuana use has harmful effects. I don’t know of any scientific evidence of that. I don’t think it has been evaluated. We need to test it,” said Nora Volkow, who as director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse leads federal research on illicit substances.
There have been many studies trying to establish a link between marijuana consumption and negative effects on the human body or psyche. The most serious potential consequence is to develop a cannabis use disorder—it is not addiction, as marijuana is completely non-addictive, but it is the habit of using marijuana as a mental crutch to the point that a person feels unable to function without it. If marijuana is consumed daily and in large doses, it can impair a person’s social habits. While the user will not suffer physical consequences for getting high instead of going out with friends, for instance, they might slowly drift away from their social network and feel under the weather, potentially leading to more marijuana use to dampen the negative feelings.
What We Know
There are a few things that we do know. Marijuana should not be consumed by minors. It causes temporary impairment similar to alcohol and therefore shouldn’t be allowed while driving or operating dangerous machinery. There have been studies establishing correlations between pancreas issues and smoking marijuana, other studies finding that smokers are more likely to have bronchitis. There have been correlations between marijuana and schizophrenia, marijuana and cancer, marijuana and many other ills—perhaps because Reefer Madness culture led people to assume that, surely, there ought to be something nefarious just waiting to be discovered. But these few accusations are the only negative effects that have ever been associated with marijuana use and these correlations are not firmly established due to the lack of proper research on the topic.
“Those studies are poor and crappy—they’re correlation studies. What they’re calling strong correlations are about the same correlations as when you look at cat ownership in childhood and likelihood to go on and have a psychiatric illness,” said Carl Hart, neuroscientist at Columbia University.
One of the reasons why the only available research is so poor and unreliable is because the U.S. government has spent the past 50 years actively smothering all research on marijuana by making it practically impossible for scientists to get authorization to study it and by limiting what cannabis plants are available for study. Indeed, researchers need approval from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Food and Drug Administration and National Institute on Drug Abuse before being allowed clinical trials, which is an exceedingly slow process, and they can only study cannabis from one source, the only federally approved supplier, the University of Mississippi. Tests have proven time and time again that the University of Mississippi produces cannabis that is much weaker and chemically distinct from the products that most Americans consume, making it closer to non-psychoactive hemp than marijuana.
“While most states in the U.S. recognize that cannabis has medical value, the DEA says otherwise, pointing to the absence of clinical research,” said Sue Sisley, researcher for the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), which sued the DEA to be allowed to become a licensed grower. “But at the same time, government regulations and bureaucracy prevent researchers like SRI from ever doing the clinical research the DEA has overtly demanded.”
This is an issue that is not limited to independent research organizations like the Scottsdale Research Institute; Nora Volkow herself, despite being at the helm of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, admits to having her hands tied.
Removing Red Tape
“Marijuana, by being a Schedule I substance, requires certain procedures that actually can be very lengthy. In some instances, it distracts researchers who want to investigate it because it’s just much more cumbersome than doing studies with other substances,” Volkow recently said in a forum hosted by The Hill. “I can testify to it. As a researcher, I always hesitate to go into doing research with Schedule I drugs. I do research in human subjects, it’s much more cumbersome.”
The DEA recently announced that a few other marijuana growers might be allowed to provide researchers with materials. This came to pass after four years of legal battle between research entities and the federal government. It concluded with the release of a confidential DEA memo proving that the agency had been willingly in violation of international treaties regarding marijuana. The DEA only accepted to consider distributing new growing licenses after it was caught red-handed violating the law to stunt research on marijuana.
While she appreciates this improvement, Volkow pointed out that it is far from enough. The only way to open the door to research is by removing the legal red tape imposed by the government regarding the need for authorizations and by allowing researchers to study state-legal marijuana available in dispensaries. It is now trivially easy to purchase and consume marijuana in retail locations in two dozen states, but researchers in these very same states are legally barred from studying the products that they can buy and consume themselves.
If marijuana does not have any benefits, medical or otherwise, then researchers can prove it. If marijuana has nefarious effects, as anti-marijuana activists and politicians claim, then it would be better for absolutely everyone to let scientists figure that out. As it currently stands, scientists are barred from studying marijuana while millions of Americans are participating in one of the most reckless, uncontrolled human trials in history; the drug is already available everywhere and consumed by countless people. If opponents of marijuana reform genuinely held the beliefs that they claim to hold, they would be the first to demand the freedom to research marijuana.
