Researchers push U.S. DEA to let them grow pot

Researchers are pressing the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to allow them to grow marijuana for research purposes.

The researchers, who claim a recent DEA administrative law judge's ruling that it would be in "the public interest" to allow marijuana to be grown for study vindicates their cause, said samples of the plant grown by the government are difficult to obtain and of poor quality, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

"The DEA has an opportunity here to live up to its rhetoric, which has been that marijuana advocates should work on conducting research rather than filing lawsuits," said Richard Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which has been fighting to test possible medical uses of marijuana for years.

"It's become more and more obvious that the DEA has been obstructing potentially beneficial medical research, and now is the time for them to change," he told the Post.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International