The Legalization of Marijuana

Every person in the United States has heard of the illicit substance called marijuana. Yet, unknown to most people, there is one place in the United States where marijuana is grown legally. That place is the Medicinal Plant Garden, right here at the University of Mississippi.

The Medicinal Plant Garden, a part of the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (RIPS) is part of the Marijuana Plant Facility The garden is over 20 years old, but the laboratory was created only four years ago.

According to Dr. Mahmoud Elsohly, research scientist for RIPS, the laboratory of the Medicinal Plant Facility is used to study various applications of marijuana. For example, the scientists grow marijuana to test its physical makeup, analyze marijuana confiscated by the DEA, law enforcement agencies, and various narcotics groups, to find the potency ratings of the drugs, and extract THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) from plants they harvested.

One project that the Medicinal Plant Facility is currently working on is a medicine made from THC for use in a suppository form to replace Marinol, a capsule made of 95 percent THC and used for nausea and vomiting problems in cancer patients as well as fighting the wasting sickness, or anorexia-cachexia, suffered by 70 to 90 percent of AIDS patients.

Another practice done by the lab is to send marijuana to the Research Triangle Institute in North Carolina for use in the Compassionate IND program. This program gives marijuana to people who use it to allieviate symptoms of their diseases, such as glaucoma, cancer, and AIDS victims. However, there are only a small handfull (about eight people) receiving the marijuana, out of several thousand who have applied.

Marijuana has been used by many cultures for various ailments. Israeli scientists, for example, found the skeleton of a fourth century woman who they believed died in childbirth. Ashes nearby were found to be the burned remains of the cannabis, or marijuana, plant. The scientists say this suggests that ancient Middle Eastern women used inhaled marijuana smoke to reduce labor pains.

These days, the medical profession have found several applications for the marijuana plant. In medicine, THC (the active ingredient in marijuana) has been found again and again to help patients battling the life-threatening diseases of cancer and AIDS to fight the intense nausea that