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The Oakland, Calif.-based advocacy group Americans for
Safe Access on Wednesday filed suit in Oakland federal
court against HHS and FDA over statements the organizations have
made about medical marijuana, citing several studies that
found the drug might benefit HIV-positive people, the Los Angeles Times reports (Bailey, Los Angeles
Times, 2/22).
The lawsuit was filed following a study published in the
Feb. 13 issue of the journal Neurology finding that medical
marijuana might reduce pain from peripheral neuropathy, a type
of nerve damage, among people living with HIV/AIDS. For the
study, Donald Abrams of the University of
California-San Francisco and colleagues examined the
effects of smoking medicinal marijuana among people living
with HIV/AIDS during a two-year period beginning in May 2003.
The study found that after the first cigarette on the first
day, at least 50% of participants who received active
marijuana reported a 72% reduction in pain. Over five days,
the median reduction in pain reported by the active marijuana
smokers was 34%, compared with 17% in the placebo group, the
study found. The researchers took steps to ensure that the
marijuana in the study -- which was grown on the government's
official marijuana farm in Mississippi and stored in a locked
freezer -- was not used for recreational purposes (Kaiser Daily HIV/AIDS Report, 2/13). ASA also
cited studies that found medical marijuana might be effective
for AIDS wasting, muscle spasticity and chronic pain (Los
Angeles Times, 2/22).
Lawsuit
ASA filed the suit under the federal
Administrative Procedure Act, which allows judicial review and
reversal of any federal agency decision seen as subjective or
capricious, according to ASA attorney Joe Elford, the Oakland Tribune reports (Richman, Oakland
Tribune, 2/22). According to the group, the lawsuit says that
HHS and FDA have publicly released "false and misleading
statements" about the benefits of medical marijuana, the New York Times reports. The group is calling
on the agencies to retract and correct statements that ASA
says are "incorrect, dishonest and a flagrant violation of
laws," the Times reports (Marshall, New York Times, 2/22). HHS
spokesperson Christina Pearson would not comment on the suit.
She cited an April 2006 statement that federal evaluations
have found "no sound scientific studies supported medical use
of marijuana," the San Francisco Chronicle reports (Egelko, San
Francisco Chronicle, 2/22). Pearson added that "no animal or
human data supported the safety or efficacy" of medical
marijuana (New York Times, 2/22). "We aimed to file this
lawsuit at a time when the country was talking about the
science," ASA Executive Director Steph Sherer said, adding,
"The federal government has had enough information in front of
it for years to break the gridlock of this issue. We're suing
to demand that the FDA stop holding science hostage to
politics." ASA in 2004 petitioned HHS and FDA under the Data
Quality Act, a 2000 law that requires information circulated
by federal agencies to be objective, fair and meet specific
quality guidelines. The act also allows citizens to challenge
government information they believe to be inaccurate or based
on poor data. ASA's 2004 petition said that the government
ignored studies and the consensus of the medical community
about the efficacy of medical marijuana. HHS in 2005 denied
the petition and also denied an appeal in 2006 (Oakland
Tribune, 2/22). According to suit filed on Wednesday, HHS'
decisions concerning the petition did not address the
scientific evidence about medical marijuana (San Francisco
Chronicle, 2/22).
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