The battle for UMASS marijuana

John Tierney continues his War on Some Drugs series with Marijuana Pipe Dreams. Read the whole thing, it's short, but here's the best quote.

Discovering benefits, after all, would undermine the great anti-marijuana campaign that has taken hold in Washington. Marijuana is deemed to be such a powerful "gateway" to other drugs that it's become the top priority in the federal drug war, much to the puzzlement of many scientists, not to mention the police officers who see a lot of worse drugs on the streets.

Another great piece by Tierney and a special thanks to Ann Althouse for picking up on this story. She says,

...This makes it look as though the DEA is trying to prevent scientists from proving medicinal benefits. ...It's one thing to be against marijuana, quite another to be against scientific research.

Not exactly a searing indictment of the DEA but nonetheless, Ann - although she is no extremist - definitely blogs to the right. It's good to see a conservative of her influence take on the issue at all and especially heartening to see her take a stand against the DEA's self-serving position in preventing this very small but important research program at UMASS from going forward.

I remind you that you can also follow the progress of the case on the Craker blog.