NIDA official admits agency has harmed scientific inquiry

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/nida-directors-tells-congress-its-easier-study-heroin-or-cocaine-marijuana?page=0%2C1

Go to the link to read part of her exchange with Virginia Democrat Gerry Connelly.

Volkow acknowledges that the NIDA places tighter controls on marijuana than it does heroin or meth, and that the agency holds a monopoly on production of cannabis only, while other drugs the U.S. creates for studies are produced by license to other entities.



Connolly also noted Volkow's agency is not dedicated to scientific inquiry. Its entire goal is prevention of drug use. Therefore, it's goal is not aligned with reality - because reality doesn't require suppression of evidence in order to be "true."

As has been noted here, the NIDA cannot even mention a possible benefit from a drug that has been restricted by Congress. This is also the case with the Drug Czar's office.

We have entire bureaucracies whose purpose is to propagate a drug war, not seek out truths that may be contrary to their mission statements.

Why does the U.S. taxpayer fund agencies whose sole purpose is to create propaganda directed at them?

This is craziness. This is reefer madness.

It seems to me Congress needs to change the law regarding various federal agencies to align with reality-based views of scientific inquiry. More to the point, Congress should dissolve the Drug Czar's office and remove cannabis from the oversight of any political entity, since Congress has demonstrated it was willing, in the past, to use federal agencies to target populations in the U.S. for arrest based upon Congress' own willingness to suppress evidence available from scientific research, as well as prevent the research itself.

Let the National Academy of Sciences have oversight on drug policy and access for research, as well as licensing. Decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and allow states to make their own laws, as was the case with the end of prohibition of alcohol.

Interestingly, spite of various agencies tasked with suppressing evidence or preventing research, a body of research exists. As one doctor who has done research into the therapeutic value of marijuana explained in a video (Donald Abrams), scientists and doctors have to word their grant and research proposals in such a way that they indicate their goal is to show harm, not merely test a hypothesis based upon observable evidence.

Nevertheless, when your research indicates no harm, as PhD/Dean of Nurses Melanie Dreher found in her studies of children in Jamaica whose mothers used cannabis throughout pregnancy as part of folk medicine, your research may often be denied future funding.

That's not how good science operates.