Newsgroups: talk.politics.drugs
From: [a--ld--a] at [netcom.com] (Patrick Kane)
Subject: Reason: Medicinal Marijuana
Date: Wed, 6 Apr 1994 13:29:11 GMT

Marijuana has some very important possible medical uses.  This month's issue
of reason addresses the FDA's position on medicinal marijuana.  An excerpt
follows:

--------------

Subhead: The FDA seems open to the idea of medical marijuana.

     A pharmaceutical company typically spends some $230 million and a decade
or longer to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration for a new
medicine. But Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), expects to complete the process within two years
at a cost of about $500,000. To be sure, the drug he has in mind--marijuana--
s not exactly new.


     Encouraged by the FDA's 1992 approval of MDMA research with human
subjects, Doblin asked the agency's Pilot Drug Evaluation Staff what it would
take to make marijuana available by prescription. With the FDA's guidance,
MAPS developed a research plan, including a large, multi-site clinical study
and a series of individual trials, to test marijuana's effectiveness in treat
ing AIDS wasting syndrome. In October the FDA approved a protocol for the
large study, to be supervised by Donald Abrams, research director of the San
Francisco Community Consortium, which coordinates AIDS research in the Bay
Area.


     Doblin says the protocol was submitted, revised, and approved within a
week. "The FDA has expedited this," he says. "The FDA is being extremely
helpful." He attributes what he calls "a monumental shift at the FDA" to the
waning of the drug war and the influence of Commissioner David Kessler. He
says Kessler seems sympathetic to patients seeking legal access to marijuana.

--------------

So begins this issue's featured article from Reason magazine.

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