Memory loss in the FDA medical marijuana "announcement"

On April 20, 2006 the FDA issued a well-reported, terse, anonymous announcement that marijuana had no medical value and was unsafe.

Would you be at all surprised if you knew that on April 12, 2006, the FDA wrote to the principal medical marijuana activists, Americans for Safe Access, that

"we would need additional time to complete our response to your appeal. At this time we are continuing to prepare our response but require additional time to coordinate Agency review." ?

Hmm, maybe FDA's April 20th announcement reflected severe short-term memory loss at the FDA. Certainly they revealed long-term memory loss -- the extensive Institute of Medicine report on Marijuana and Medicine requested and paid for the the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (the "drug czar").

This letter was the sixth such letter from FDA saying it needed an additional 60 days to respond to ASA's appeal of May 2005 of FDA's thrice-delayed denial of ASA's petition of October 4, 2004, to HHS to correct its statements about the medical value of marijuana.

The Center for Regulatory Effectiveness has a nice overview of the procedural history of Americans for Safe Access Data Quality Act (DQA) petition with links to the petition and the various HHS unresponsive responses.