No less than thirty members of the United States Congress sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Urwell on Tuesday demanding an end to the federal monopoly on marijuana research. The letter was signed by Oregon legend, and marijuana reform hero, Earl Blumenauer along with 29 other members of Congress. The letter was sent in an attempt to urge the federal government to allow more marijuana research, which could yield potentially life saving information about marijuana’s medical benefits. The federal government’s official stance is that marijuana has no medical benefit, despite the fact that the federal government supplies medical marijuana every month to four patients.
Per the Huffington Post:
Thirty members of Congress, led by Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), H. Morgan Griffith (R-Va.), Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), sent a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell on Tuesday demanding an end to the federal monopoly on marijuana research so that more studies can be done by scientists around the nation.
“We write to express our support for increasing scientific research on the therapeutic risks and benefits of marijuana,” the letter reads. “We ask that you take measures to ensure that any non-National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded researcher who has acquired necessary Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Institutional Review Board (IRB), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and appropriate state and local authority approval be able to access marijuana for research at-cost without further review.”
The letter follows a United States House of Representatives vote which passed a bill defunding DEA medical marijuana raids in states that have passed medical marijuana legislation. The bill is currently facing an uphill battle in the United States Senate. The letter from legislators also follows a report released by the Drug Policy Alliance and Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies which blasted the federal government for obstructing marijuana research and fighting all valid attempts to reschedule marijuana.
