Liberal Talk Radio

Pope Urban VIII, er, rather the FDA, led the Republican charge back to the ’50s on this day with their spectacularly unsubstantiated pronouncement (as reported in the New York Times) that:

“no sound scientific studies” supported the medical use of marijuana, contradicting a 1999 review by a panel of highly regarded scientists.

Yet again politics trumps science and reason. As the Times article notes, while it’s baldly, ahem, “inaccurate” for the FDA to say that no studies support the medical benefits of marijuana (there are some, and they do), to the extent that there are not more studies available, the FDA is fully to blame, as the Feds have consitently refused to fund research on the topic.

A little further down, the article notes that manufactured versions of the chemically active compounds in marijuana HAVE been approved for evaluation, and for treatment of certain conditions.

Hmmm …

So, drugs are okay if they’re manufactured by Lily or Pfizer or Novartis, but they’re bad if grandma can grow them in her garden? I don’t get it.

And this in a country where four million kids are on Ritalin, making it by far the most widely used drug among kids under 16.