Global Ganja Report

For the first time in nearly 20 years, a US Court of Appeals is set to hear oral arguments in a lawsuit challenging the federal government's classification of cannabis as a dangerous drug with no medicinal value: Americans for Safe Access v. Drug Enforcement Administration. This historic case will force a federal court to finally review the scientific evidence regarding the therapeutic efficacy of cannabis. During a press briefing Oct. 4, plaintiffs in the case, along with leading medical researchers and clinicians, spoke by conference call about the necessity of the federal government recognizing current scientific data supporting marijuana rescheduling. Cannabis is currently classified in the same category as heroin despite calls from scientists, medical professionals, and policy makers to reschedule the plant for medical use.

A government-sponsored study published recently in The Open Neurology Journal concludes that cannabis provides relief to some chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are needed—directly challenging DEA classification of the drug under "Schedule I," that reserved for substances with no medical uses. The study, sponsored by the State of California and conducted at the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, calls the Schedule I placement "not accurate" and "not tenable."

Patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA) has discovered that a second patient at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center has been denied a transplant in the past year because of medical marijuana use. In response, ASA sent a letter June 11 to the Cedars-Sinai Transplant Center on behalf of Toni Trujillo, a qualified medical marijuana patient who was removed from the kidney transplant list earlier this year. Trujillo has had kidney problems for most of her life and has been on dialysis for the past five years, since an existing kidney transplant began failing. The letter urges the world-renowned hospital to promptly re-list Trujillo and change its policy on medical marijuana.

Israeli scientists have developed a non-psychoative cannabis variety, in what is being portrayed as a boost for medical marijuana. According to Israel's Maariv newspaper, the new variety looks, smells and even tastes "the same" as psychoactive varieties. "It has the same scent, shape and taste as the original plant—it's all the same—but the numbing sensation that users are accustomed to has disappeared," said Tzahi Klein, head of development at Tikkun Olam, the firm that developed what an AFP account calls "the species." Klein adds: "Many of our patients who tried the new plant come back to us and say: 'You tricked me'"—because they assumed they had been given a placebo.

Smoking cannabis can help relieve spasticity (muscle tightness) and pain in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, a new study suggests. Study leader Dr. Jody Corey-Bloom, director of the US San Diego Multiple Sclerosis Center, looked at 30 multiple sclerosis patients with muscle tightness who weren't helped by conventional medicines, and discovered they found relief from smoking cannabis. "Smoking pot reduces the spasticity by about a third compared to patients on placebo," she said. Those who smoked cannabis also had a 50% decrease in pain scores. The study is published in the May 14 issue of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. (Huffington Post, Health Day, May 14)

The enactment of state medical marijuana laws is associated with reduced instances of suicide, according to a discussion paper published recently by the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn, Germany. Researchers at Montana State University, the University of Colorado, and San Diego State University assessed rates of suicide in the years before and after the passage of medical marijuana laws. Authors of the discussion paper, entitled "High on Life: Medical Marijuana Laws and Suicide," found:

The country's leading medical marijuana advocacy group, Americans for Safe Access (ASA), filed an appeal brief Jan. 26 in the DC Circuit to compel the federal government to reclassify cannabis for medical use. In July 2011, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) denied a petition filed in 2002 by the Coalition for Rescheduling Cannabis (CRC). The petition was denied only after the coalition sued the government for unreasonable delay. The ASA brief is an appeal of the rescheduling denial.

Moderate cannabis use appears to cause no long-term damage to the lungs, according to a new study by the University of California at San Francisco and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, released Jan. 10 in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Results of the 20-year study, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, indicate that cannabis doesn't do the kind of damage tobacco does.