Government cheese

Or rather, marijuana.

What's fascinating about this Q&A is the unintended case it makes for legalization.

It's been cultivated for thousands of years.

Q. WHAT EXACTLY DOES THE MARIJUANA PROJECT DO?

A. Though cannabis had been used by man for thousands of years, it wasn’t until 1964 that the actual chemical structure of the active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol — THC — was determined. That stimulated new research on the plant.

Illicit marijuana has stuff on that can kill you...courtesy of the government.

Q. WHY BOTHER CULTIVATING YOUR OWN MARIJUANA WHEN LAW ENFORCEMENT ORGANIZATIONS SEIZE BRICKS OF IT EVERY DAY?

A. The most obvious reason is that with confiscated marijuana, you don’t really know what you have. When researchers are performing clinical tests, they must have standardized material that will be the same every time. And it must be safe. You certainly wouldn’t want to give a sick person something sprayed with pesticide or angel dust, substances we’ve detected in some illicit marijuana.

It's a phenomenonal plant that's grown in every continent.

Q. ONE OF THE BASIC PRINCIPLES OF AGRONOMY IS TO START WITH GOOD SEEDS. WHERE DO YOUR SEEDS COME FROM?

A. That’s a very good question. Most of the illicit material in the 1960s came from Mexico. So, in collaboration with the D.E.A. and the Mexican government, we acquired those seeds. Later, we acquired others from Colombia, Thailand, Jamaica, India, Pakistan and places in the Middle East. That permitted us to study chemical and botanical differences. By 1976, we were growing about 96 different varieties.

Interestingly, that led us to see that there was only one species of cannabis. It had always been thought that there were many. But you could see that the chemistry of this plant is the same qualitatively no matter where it comes from. What makes each different is the relative proportion of the different chemicals in there, which doesn’t make a different species. It’s really the same species, but different varieties of it. The different types of varieties hybridize very easily.

Many, many adults really like it.

At this laboratory, which began in 1968, we often investigate marijuana’s chemistry. We also have a farm where we grow cannabis for federally approved researchers. Our material is employed in clinical studies around the country, to see if the active ingredient in this plant is useful for pain, nausea, glaucoma, for AIDS patients and so on. For these tests, researchers need standardized material for cigarettes or THC pills. We grow the cannabis as contractors for the National Institute on Drug Abuse — NIDA. And the only researchers who can get our material are those with special permits. We have visitors at the building now and then who ask, “Oh, do you give samples?” We say, “No!”

But, no.