Now that every single person in Colorado is hiiiiiiiigh on the reefer -- except for lawyers; no weed for you, esquires -- the state is going to invest your hard-earned pot dollars in scientific research to find out just how freakin' awesome medical marijuana really is:
Colorado will spend more than $8 million researching marijuana's medical potential - a new frontier because government-funded marijuana research traditionally focuses on the drug's negative health effects. [...]
"This is the first time we've had government money to look at the efficacy of marijuana, not the harms of marijuana," said Dr. Suzanne Sisley, a Scottsdale, Arizona, psychiatrist who will help run a study on marijuana for veterans with PTSD. Sisley plans to do her research in private practice after previously working for the University of Arizona.
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Some of the studies require approval from federal agencies, including "the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and either the National Institutes of Health or the Department of Health and Human Services." We have no way of knowing what the feds will do, since sometimes they are all, "Yeah, man, go ahead and enjoy your legal-in-your-state weed," and then they're all "PSYCH!" because that is how the feds roll sometimes, if you are not too stoned to remember how the feds were cool with legalized weed and then busted up all the dispensaries anyway:
This probably came as something of a surprise to the businesses, seeing as how the DOJ said back in August that it would only enforce federal laws against pot in cases where it was being sold to children, being sold outside states where it was legal, or if the profits were going to “criminal enterprises.”
But if the feds pull another switcheroo and allow the studies to go forward, some of the medical conditions researchers think might be improved by toking up include post-traumatic stress disorder, irritable bowel syndrome, brain tumors, pediatric epilepsy, and your basic pain that is usually treated with oxycodone, which everyone knows is a gateway drug to heroin, so maybe just getting high on weed is better after all. Who knows? That's why they are going to do studies to it!
One of the researchers poised to study marijuana and PTSD called the Colorado awards groundbreaking because the state is providing money without federal red tape.
"The opportunity in Colorado is an amazing one," said Marcel Bonn-Miller, a psychiatrist with the University of Pennsylvania who leads the Substance Abuse and Anxiety Program for the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department. The VA is not participating directly in his marijuana studies.
There is no indication that researchers will also be studying whether eating too much pot candy will make you A Idiot like Maureen Dowd .
But maybe, if the studies are approved by the federal government, that will be in the next round of research.
[ AP ]
Juanatoc?
No. There is no cure for the pain that is Rush.