Why has the US government blocked clinical trials of marijuana?
The FDA is the entity that actually takes all of this data that's generated during clinical trials that the company does for safety and efficacy. And reviews that data, has scientist review that data and decide through several phases of approval process whether or not this drug is actually safe and effective for humans and what the various side effects are. The things that you hear on the television commercial, when your becoming addicted to gambling or whatever the drug causes you to become addicted to gambling. Those kinds of things are determined by the FDA. The DEA is the entity that enforces federal drug laws. They're responsible for enforcing the controlled substances act and import and export of drugs, enforcing that. And the DEA actually licenses importers and exporters and manufacturers of drugs that are listed on the controlled substances act. The DEA also has this ability to approve or deny applications for marijuana, for example. And right now, believe it or not, most people do not know this, but the federal government actually sends medical marijuana to five patients who are approved by the government. They've been grand fathered in through an old FDA program, compassionate program. And they still, every month receive marijuana; which is terrible marijuana, the quality is awful by the way. From the National Institute on Drug Abuse, NITA. Right now NITA, National Institute on Drug Abuse has a monopoly on the production of marijuana in this country. Essentially for FDA approval to be possible, it must be the case, that there is a private production facility or some sort of private production source for marijuana. It's impossible to use the governments marijuana, which is again very low quality, it's extremely poor, there are many many problems with it, it's production and manufacturing. I don't think it's very effective for, or as effective as other things might be for some of the patients who use it. For FDA approval to be possible it must be the case that there's private production, that there's some production source of marijuana, that can be used and given to the studies that are going to be undertaken. With human clinical trials and where they're going to gather data that they are going to submit to the FDA. There has to be a source for that, that's not the National Institute on Drug Abuse, essentially.
