/r/legalizetrees
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I recently was assigned, in school, to write a literature review on a topic of my choice. The topic I chose was how marijuana use affected users’ chances of experiencing increased depression. Almost all of the scholarly articles that I was able to find were only surveys testing for an association, or correlation, between marijuana use and depression. After reading these, I found many different hypotheses and conclusions about the topic (http://imgur.com/PyIqFnJ) (http://imgur.com/Kz8eMK6). I wondered why there was no answer to this question. I mean, marijuana is legal in a number of states for medicinal and even recreational use, you'd think that scientific research would have been done on something like this.
As it turns out, it is actually very difficult for organizations to conduct research on medical marijuana. MAPS is an organization attempting to conduct research on marijuana to develop it into an FDA-approved prescription medicine. However, they need a supply of research grade marijuana which can only be obtained from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and NIDA will only make it available to projects it approves. NIDA has refused to supply marijuana to two MAPS-sponsored protocols that the FDA had already approved (http://www.maps.org/research-archive/mmj/).
The NY Times reported that Shirley Simson, NIDA's spokeswoman, said, "We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/health/policy/19marijuana.html)
NIDA also posted a video to YouTube which demonstrates that they are only interested in researching the consequences of marijuana use and legalization. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7127QLM2YWA)
Clearly this is an issue which is hindering the progression of the legalization marijuana. Please spread this around.