Surely the DEA has a mailing address to which it's possible to send relevant research papers?
Surely they read the literature?
The DEA, as a government agency, was created with the mission of eradicating drugs. They aren't really in the business of doing scientific evaluation of the drugs themselves, and I would be surprised if there are any scientists on staff, and if there are, even more surprised if they have any pull.
At any rate, the DEA doesn't set drug policy, the federal government does.
The federal governments' track record when it comes to controlling substances has not often been in line with scientific or social needs, as is evidenced by the extreme cost of the current war on drugs and the consequent negative effects on society. For example, cocaine is a refinement of cocoa which was included in things like coca-cola as a mild stimulant. When it became controlled, smuggling economics came to bear, and thus refining it into cocaine allowed for more value-per-unit-shipment in smuggling. Being more addictive, and thus worse for society, was a side effect of this. Worse, with the war on cocaine that occurred an even further refinement was done for the same economic reasons resulting in crack.
I posit that if the wellbeing of society were the primary importance for the federal government there would be no drug war, and thus no drug related violent crimes (or very few) and a lot less addiction.
English has a simple grammar to figure out, but things like this remind me why it's a difficult language to truly grok.
(I am Italian. Our government does occasionally do things like this, but at least they have to employ four paragraphs of byzantine quasi-latin, not get away with five words of non-language).
I mean, if some words are in a law that causes public expense, arrests, killings, etc. I would say it's pretty important that their meaning is set in stone and universally understood! I suppose there are problems with the US Constitution in that sense, but in this case the language used is current, not 300 years old.
Their classification of marijuana as having "no accepted medical use" is silly on its face, and I hope I adequately gave that impression in my comment. I'm not agreeing with it. I'm just pointing it out.
Unfortunately, changing the DEA's opinion is harder than just sending them the medical literature, and pointing out the contradictions in their position. This is a problem that needs to be addressed through the legislative process. (The DEA follows federal policy; it doesn't necessarily establish or alter federal policy). Fortunately, change is happening at the state level. If we reach the point where most states recognize medical uses for marijuana, then eventually, the federal government will have to cave on its hard line. Or so the thinking goes.
English is indeed a complex language, and it's also filled with the sorts of loaded terms with which lawyers have a field day. For instance, consider the word "accepted" in the phrase "accepted medical use." Accepted by whom? Who decides whether to officially "accept" a medical use? Is it the DEA? Is it the medical and scientific community? Is it the legislative branch of the federal government? Is it the judicial branch? Is it someone else? If this issue were ever to come to court, the DEA could argue that there is no "accepted" consensus. It would be a weaselly argument, but English is a fantastic language for weaselly, semantic arguments like that.
[1] http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2014/11/12/1535-71...
Correct. The study tested two cannabinoids isolated from marijuana, not whole-bud marijuana.
"But just because these components are present in marijuana I can almost bet that it will be reduced to an argument in the fight for legalization of smoking weed."
Well, yes, it's going to go there eventually. Pretty much all conversations about the medical efficaciousness of marijuana (or marijuana-derived compounds) bump up against the legalization topic. This is because conducting research on a substance currently deemed illegal by the federal government is very difficult. It's also because the government labels marijuana not just illegal, but a drug "...with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." (This is the 'Schedule I' classification).
Marijuana's classification in Schedule I, a category for "the most dangerous drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical dependence," is ridiculous. For what it's worth, here are some drugs legally considered less dangerous, or psychologically and physically dependence-forming than marijuana: cocaine, opium, methamphetamine, oxycodone, morphine, codeine, fentanyl, Dexedrine, Adderall, Ritalin, Vicodin, Valium, Ambien, ketamine, and anabolic steroids.
"I'm not saying it shouldn't be legalized (perhaps it should, perhaps it shouldn't), but that it's an entirely different question."
Absolutely. Marijuana's legalization as a consumer item has little to no bearing on this finding, or vice versa. That said, its current medical status is in debate, and whenever a potential medical usage comes up, that topic is going to come up with it.