A dandy from Tandy

Underassistant Administrator of Untruth, Karen Tandy of the DEA, has an letter to the editor in the NYT today. She outdoes herself with this febrile defense of the DEA's refusal to allow acceptable grade cannabis to be grown for independent testing.

The D.E.A. doesn't limit the potency of marijuana for research. The agency has registered every one of the 163 researchers who requested to use marijuana in studies and who have met Department of Health and Human Services standards.

None of these researchers have sought any higher quality marijuana, but if they ever did, it could be supplied.

Supplied from where? Their one schwag factory that produces all the raw product for testing? Inside the beltway they like to call this a misstatement. Round these parts they call it a baldfaced lie. Those 163 researchers are mostly shills they commissioned to get the results they wanted. The only reason no one asked for better grade testing material is because they get fired for failing to prove the schwag is harmful.

Study after independent study going back well over a century has found the plant to be safe for moderate use. Modern day studies have proven its medical benefits and in fact, alternate agency disinformer, Andrea Barthwell -- formerly of the ONDCP before she was fired for that unforunate drunken incident at the office party -- is now a paid lobbyist for Sativex. Don't let the fancy talk fool you. Sativex is essentially liquid marijuana.

And why would they bother to develop this all natural version when they already have synthetics that allegedly deliver the same effects? Because its chemical composition is so complex that it is the most effective when used in its whole plant state.

A lot of corporate cash is riding on this one. Protecting the pharma corps' interest in marketing a prescribed delivery system is the only reason they are still vilifying the "raw" plant. Anybody can grow a weed, but only Bayer Canada can dispense the "distilled" plant. One expects possession of the natural plant will remain a crime while the pharmaceutical version, distilled from the exact same plant, will be legal only by prescription and at a hefty profit to Bayer and GW Pharma. Explains a lot about the war on marijuana, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, terminally ill patients suffer in pain for lack of a effective medicine or fear of arrest for using a natural remedy to ease the pain of their dying days. It's just not right.