The Farm

by Suzanne Wills, Drug Policy Chair

suzy@dpft.org

While the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration are raiding medical cannabis (marijuana) clinics in California, confiscating computers, plants and patient records, the National Institute on Drug Abuse is growing cannabis in Mississippi for seven patients.

In 1975 Robert Randall learned that the National Institute on Drug Abuse was growing cannabis on seven acres, known as The Farm, at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. Mr. Randall sued NIDA for access to the cannabis to treat his glaucoma. He had been diagnosed with glaucoma in 1972 at the age of 24 and told he would be blind within 5 years. He received the first of only 14 “compassionate investigational new drug waivers” that allowed patients to receive approximately 300 cannabis cigarettes a month from NIDA and smoke them legally anywhere in the USA. Mr. Randall died last year still able to see as well as he did in 1972. He said, “Marijuana is clearly helpful in ways other drugs are not.” “It’s easy to joke about, but the government is causing people to suffer needlessly.”

George McMahon was born with a rare genetic, neurological disease, Nail Patella Syndrome. It attacks major organs, disrupts the immune system and causes bones to be deformed and break. He had 19 surgeries and was prescribed Demerol, codeine, Valium and other drugs before he began receiving cannabis from NIDA in 1990. Mr. McMahon is one of seven surviving patients in the program. He says, “To be relieved of some of the pain and still be within the law means so much.” “Most people don’t know that I’m sick unless I tell them. The marijuana has really been that effective in controlling my symptoms.”

Only 14 “research subjects” were ever admitted to NIDA’s Marijuana Project. The U. S. Public Health Service cut off new applications in 1992 under the first Bush administration. In 2000, under the Clinton administration, the Justice Department won a class action suit brought by hundreds of patients who had sued to join the program.

The Marijuana Project was started for research purposes, but neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the National Institute on Drug Abuse ever published any follow-up studies on the patients. In 2001 a privately funded study was conducted by Dr. Ethan Russo on four of the remaining patients. Their conditions included glaucoma, chronic musculoskeletal pain, spasm, nausea and the spasticity of multiple sclerosis. All were stable with respect to their chronic conditions. Dr. Russo administered MRI brain scans, chest X-rays, neuropsychological tests, immunological assays, and EEGs. He found no significant physical or cognitive impairment attributable to cannabis. He did observe “mild changes in pulmonary function” in three of the four patients. These changes were not significant and there was no evidence of malignancy. Dr. Russo’s findings were consistent with studies conducted during the 1970s in Jamaica, Costa Rica and Greece on heavy cannabis smokers.