As medical marijuana dispensaries prepare to open, critics wonder if we’ve done enough science
The laws are passed, the licenses divvied and the storefronts leased. With dispensaries set to open soon, the public appears sold on marijuana’s medicinal benefits. But what do we really know about its side effects?
For instance, two recent studies have connected regular marijuana use to long-term memory loss and bipolar disorder. While both teams described their findings as preliminary, the caveat does little to lighten the impact of their conclusions. Manic mood swings and the loss of mental faculties are no joke.
“With the movement to decriminalize marijuana, we need more research to understand its effect on the brain,” says Matthew Smith, the psychiatry and behavioral sciences professor who led the memory-loss study at Northwestern University. (The bipolar study was conducted at Warwick Medical School.)
Yet the federal government’s listing of marijuana as a Schedule I narcotic — a controlled substance with no accepted medical use — has dampened the kind of research Smith calls for.
Thus, the advent of medical marijuana in 23 states, including Nevada, presents a novel problem. Adults are free to harm themselves, with over-the-counter or prescribed substances, provided purveyors give adequate warning of possible consequences. Add minors to the mix, and it gets murkier. Who would be held responsible if a child given marijuana as a medicine today suffered brain damage 20 years hence? His parents? The doctor? The dispensary owner?
Such questions birthed the FDA-required drug disclaimers. The government has to cover its bases in matters of public health … and liability. But medical marijuana is coming to market outside the usual bounds of testing and approval. To some, it’s a case of the public will forcing rapid change on a slow-moving system.
Not everyone’s on the bandwagon. “I believe medical marijuana is really a lie at this time,” says Dave Marlon, president of Solutions Recovery, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility in Las Vegas. “There is no FDA-approved dosage for marijuana that you smoke.”
Marlon believes the MMJ rush is a cover for recreational use — and a dangerous one. He doesn’t object to adults smoking a joint before dinner any more than he does to them having a glass of whiskey afterward. The difference is that alcohol comes with a warning label — the result of a large body of scientific testing — while medical marijuana is being pushed as beneficial on uninformed consumers.
The anti-MMJ Marlon finds a surprising ally in the call for scientific testing: Aseem Sappal, provost and dean of faculty of pot college Oaksterdam University.
“Standardized warning labels are something we need to do,” Sappal says. “It probably won’t happen until things change federally, or until the substance is reclassified or declassified. Only then can I see that happening on a national level, and until then, you will have issues — one state may regulate it well; another may not.”
Nevada’s regulations have gotten the thumbs-up from industry insiders in other states, says Pam Graber, information and education officer for the medical marijuana program in Carson City. The pertinent law includes pages on required safety warnings that cover addiction, health risks and more.
The law also calls for a medical marijuana research program to be established at the University of Nevada School of Medicine, but the program wasn’t funded. “Unfortunately,” says UNSOM Senior Associate Dean for Research James Kenyon, “the provision did not address the complexity of clinical research and the administrative and regulatory barriers to conducting quality research into the efficacy of a federally controlled substance.”
Like Sappal, Kenyon is referring to marijuana’s Schedule 1 listing which, insiders say, spooks most research institutions that receive federal money. Three U.S. senators recently made a move toward solving that problem — a bill they introduced would move the drug to Schedule II, the list that includes oxycodone and morphine. But Sappal and others believe the DEA, FDA and Big Pharma have too much money at stake.
But it’s one step closer to what Marlon would like to see. “Criminalization of small amounts of marijuana and incarceration as a result of that is wrong,” he says. “So fixing that makes sense. Doing double-blind studies that get published in peer-reviewed journals makes sense. The state government saying it’s medicinal, when most of it isn’t? I don’t think that’s helpful.”
