"Researching the Health Effects of Marijuana"
Why is there such a dearth of rigorous research
on the effects of marijuana?
The first major study wasn’t published until 2007.
Why did it take so long?
Why did the pharmaceutical industry fail
to show any interest?
Some might prefer a simple answer:
since it’s just a plant,
it can’t be patented for your stockholders,
thus removing any incentive
for investing corporate funds.
Yes, but it’s more complicated than just that.
There are research funds available,
a hundred million dollars of public money
in a single year, but historically that money
was generally obtainable only for research
on the negative effects.
See, in the U.S., cannabis
is still officially lumped in with heroin
as a Schedule 1 drug, which means, by definition,
it’s classified by the government to have
no medicinal value.
This designation resulted in a near-cessation of scientific research,
particularly since the only way
researchers could get it without risking jail time
is a state-run farm in Mississippi,
controlled by the National Institute on Drug Abuse,
which has historically only greenlighted research
aimed at demonstrating harmful effects.
Residents of 23 states can walk out and just buy it,
but US scientists must wade through onerous paperwork,
and even when they do get it,
it’s the wrong stuff.
It’s not what people are actually using these days.
The studies coming out are on like your grandma’s grass,
a few percent THC,
whereas the stuff available these days
may be 10 times more potent.
So, there’s this crazy Catch-22,
where the cannabis that should be studied
is illegal,
and the cannabis that can be legally studied
—the decades-old Mississippi strain—
is essentially kept off-limits.
So, ill-informed practitioners are, thus,
left to make do with anecdotes off the internet,
like everybody else, which is bad medicine.
As long as clinical research on cannabis
is controlled by regulators expressly
opposed to the stuff,
we may miss out on potential benefits.
That’s no excuse, though.
Just because there are political barriers
to research doesn’t mean we should lower our bar
in terms of demanding evidence.
The sick still need medically sound treatments.
Of course, now there’s pressure
coming from both sides.
The marijuana industry is now big business,
and with those billions, can rally the troops.
Cannabis researchers already talk of being bombarded
with e­mails from pro­cannabis groups
if they dare make any negative comments about the drug.
“Marijuana research is like tobacco research in the ’60s,”
says one University of Colorado researcher.
So now, there’s fear big money will push
the pendulum too far the other way.
But the barriers go beyond money, and politics, and prejudice.
Cannabis research is hard to do.
How do you do a double blind study with marijuana?
People know when they’ve been duped
with placebo dope.
People can tell the difference between
pot brownies and regular brownies;
otherwise, they wouldn’t eat them.
And so, if you know you’re getting the active drug,
the placebo effect can kick in hard,
notes one neurobiology researcher,
especially when you’re dealing with
subjective outcomes like pain or mood.
And, imagine if you’re trying to do
a population study on memory
or cognitive impairment,
and you’re asking heavy pot smokers
to try to remember how much
they’ve been smoking over their life.
You can imagine how that might
“influence data accuracy.”
Let me give you an example
of how convoluted this can get.
Neuropsychological testing of cannabis users
have found residual negative effects,
in terms of scoring slightly lower on memory tests.
But how do we know it’s not
a matter of motivation,
rather than actual cognitive impairment.
That had never been tested, until this study.
They gave a group of potheads
a standard learning test
and just gave the standard shpiel:
“Please complete the following series
of tasks which measure different areas
of cognition, like memory and attention.”
That’s what you’d normally say,
and when you do, pot smokers
score significantly worse.
Ah, but what if instead you said this:
“Please complete the following series of tasks.
It is important that you try your very best
on these tasks, because this research will be used
to support legislation on marijuana policy.”
So, hey, if you do good,
they might decriminalize weed or something.
And under those circumstances, boom,
the apparent cognitive impairment disappears.
Now, you could argue that lack of motivation
is a problem in and of itself.
But, hey, it’s better than having
long-term brain damage.