WASHINGTON — Getting pot on the street is easy. Just ask the 17 million Americans who smoked the federally illegal drug in 2010. Getting weed from the government? That’s a lot harder.
In April, the Food and Drug Administration approved a first-of-its-kind study to test whether marijuana can ease the nightmares, insomnia, anxiety and flashbacks common in combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
But now, another branch of the federal government has stymied the study. The Health and Human Services Department is refusing to sell government-grown marijuana to the nonprofit group proposing the research, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
The agency did leave the door open to eventually providing 13 pounds of the weed, which is grown at the University of Mississippi. But the HHS committee that rejected the request provided such conflicting criticisms that the person directing the study, MAPS director Rick Doblin, is unsure how to address its concerns.
“Their goal at higher levels, I think, is to block the study,” said Doblin, who for 25 years has been jumping through regulatory hoops to launch human studies of marijuana, LSD and MDMA, known as Ecstasy, which are all illegal.
The proposal must pass the scrutiny of five committee members of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. One wrote that the study should exclude veterans who have previously smoked marijuana. And another asked for the opposite, that the study should only include people who have smoked the drug, as those naive to it might suffer anxiety or panic attacks.
A third reviewer wrote that study participants should be monitored closely — presumably in a hospital. Other comments expressed skepticism that the marijuana in the study — given in weekly batches — could be kept from getting “diverted,” meaning given or sold to nonparticipants.
Doblin said the study’s design satisfied FDA drug-diversion officials. Participants will be required to record every interaction with the weed and will have to return any they do not smoke.
Doblin plans to modify the study and resubmit it to the committee. But even if HHS approves, another bureaucracy looms — that of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The nation’s drug cops also have to approve the research.
“It’s a long road,” Doblin said. “But it’s worth it. We’re the mythical American trying to play by the rules.”
