The Biggest Problem with Cannabis: Lack of Data
Marijuana Doctor App Wants to Speed Up Medical Research for Medical Cannabis Users from CannabisNet on Vimeo.
The Medical Cannabis movement has grown a lot over the past twenty years. In the US, there is a radical shift in ideology occurring, however despite the fact that more than half of the population wants cannabis legal; there is still major hurdle that needs to be crossed.
One of the most utilized argument by politicians is, “The lack of scientific data defense” which essentially means that they will not move forward with pro-cannabis policy if there isn’t enough “peer reviewed scientific literature” on the topic of cannabis.
Of course, this is merely a method to dodge actually doing something in regards to advancing cannabis policy, and seeing that there are over 20,000 published papers on the topic, it seems that needing “more” might be overkill.
Why Politicians don’t accept the 20,000 published papers on Weed
Government officials are quite sly in their position on cannabis and in most cases do not “accept” the already massive quantity of scientific papers on cannabis because “the official avenues have not conducted these studies”.
To understand this you need to understand how cannabis research works in the US. Officially, there is only one legitimate producer of cannabis according to the federal government, which is located in Mississippi. This place was sanctioned by the government in the 1970’s as a result of the IND (Investigation of New Drug Program) which was the result of a lawsuit Robert C. Randall won in 1971.
His “Medical Necessity Defense” was the reason why the federal government decided to allow a handful of patients to receive federally grown cannabis every month to treat their conditions. While the IND pretty much set a cap for the amount of patients who could get this medicine, it was the only federal program that allowed people to smoke cannabis for their conditions.
However, since the creation of this program, hardly any new research in favor of cannabis was produced by the government. To understand why this is, you need to understand the dynamics of drug research in the US.
The Catch-22 Scenario
The DEA doesn’t accept or reject new studies. That falls under the authority of N.I.D.A (National Institute on Drug Abuse) which in 2010 admitted that they “do not fund research focused on the benefits of cannabis”. In other words, they only fund studies that are in search of negative effects on using cannabis.
After decades of trying, they haven’t really advanced on the “negative effects” of marijuana and in turn really didn’t fund any studies to advance cannabis knowledge.
The DEA in turn uses this criteria to claim that “cannabis has no medical benefits” since none of the official agencies have produced any studies to support that claim. This regardless of the fact that the government agency of cancer (cancer.gov) now admits that THC does indeed kill cancer cells. However since there aren’t any official studies done on the matter, they have the luxury to stonewall any policy advances.
The FDA also plays a role as they won’t conduct any studies unless N.I.D.A green lights it. And so we find ourselves in a catch-22 where the D.E.A can’t do anything about re-scheduling since NIDA won’t approve studies in favor of cannabis and the FDA won’t do anything unless these studies are approved by NIDA.
So the cycle goes and millions of cannabis patients sits idly waiting for these “stone aged” agencies while they do nothing.
This doesn’t mean that we don’t have any studies. As mentioned, we have over 20,000 publications in favor of cannabis from all over the world. The only problem is that the US doesn’t recognize any of these studies since it wasn’t conducted through their warped system of oppression.
So what can we do about it?
Fortunately, the cannabis movement is strong and we find ways to work around these problems. There are several cannabis companies that are doing their part in collecting data for scientific studies. One of these companies, Marijuana Doctors recently added a new feature to their app called “The Symptom Tracker” of which yours truly helped create the video for the app. This is why I decided to write a piece on it because the app is truly amazing.
In essence, what this app does is collects geographical information on patients medicating with cannabis. This includes, conditions, strains, dosage information, which medications you are replacing with cannabis, times of day, gender, age and much more.
All of the information will be interpreted by more than 500 physicians to help advance our knowledge of cannabis medicine and promote pro cannabis policies. Marijuana Doctors call this a “Crowd-Sourced Peer Review Study” and opens up the invitation to anyone who is currently using marijuana as medicine to participate. The App is free and available on the App store as well as the Play Store.
In addition, the app is also web-based, meaning you can go directly to the Marijuana Doctors website and participate without needing to download it on your phone.
The information will be shared with all participants every month with summarized graphs giving medical patients a clearer approach to treating their ailments.
Why is this important?
This information will be used by advocates to show how effective cannabis is in terms of treating conditions, which will help advance cannabis policy. We’re coming to the tipping point of cannabis policy in the United States, by helping Marijuana Doctors to collect information can drastically speed up this process. If you want to find out more, simply search for the App in the play store and the app store by searching for “Marijuana Doctors”. You should find it rather quickly. Help advance cannabis policy today!
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