Research Triangle Institute manufactures thousands of marijuana cigarettes each year. Produced for research at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the marijuana is held in a secure vault at an undisclosed location. NIDA's stock is the only legal marijuana in the country.
Steve Gust, special assistant to the director at NIDA, said the marijuana in RTI's joints is grown at the University of Mississippi, where the federal Drug Enforcement Agency handles security.
"The Mississippi farm is quite secure.... Government restrictions keep it tight. They have cameras and fences and stuff," he said.
After the marijuana is harvested, it is shipped to RTI's clandestine location-administrators will not say how it gets there-and rolled into cigarettes, using an American Machine & Foundry cigarette-rolling machine that the institute purchased in 1976. RTI has been rolling joints for NIDA since 1974.
Reid Maness, communications director at RTI, emphasized the importance of regulating the contents and dimensions of the cigarettes because they are used for research purposes. The cigarettes weigh from 700 to 1,000 milligrams and are 85 millimeters long and seven to eight millimeters in diameter.
Gust added that the marijuana grown at the University of Mississippi farm is of a consistent seed stock, so there is less variability in the plants' levels of THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana. According to NIDA's web site, in 1988, it was discovered that THC kicks off a series of cellular reactions that ultimately lead to marijuana's characteristic high.
"We do some analysis of marijuana seized from around the country. There's a wide variety and a huge range of potencies," Gust said. "On the streets there's a range of potency from about
RTI produces the cigarettes in large batches and then freezes them until NIDA requests them. A public affairs officer at the DEA declined to discuss security and transport, and Gust could only say that the marijuana is shipped to NIDA in freeze-dried containers. Gust explained that both the transport to NIDA's headquarters in Bethesda, Md. and the security there are subcontracted to local companies. "It would be a breach in security to give out [the company's names]," he said.
Once the joints arrive, NIDA can distribute the marijuana to researchers studying its biological effects. "We're involved in a range of studies looking at the effects of marijuana on memory and performance," Gust said. "It's produced in cigarette form because we're primarily looking at marijuana smoking as an abused drug and the patterns of abuse."
He explained that although much of NIDA's research is based in statistic-gathering, using marijuana in its cigarette form allows experimental studies of the drug's medicinal benefits, offering some reflections on the mechanism of joints as abused drugs.
Currently, certain configurations of the drug, such as marijuana pills, are legal by FDA standards.
"The pill form is for medical use only," Gust said. "It purifies just one of the components [THC] as a pharmaceutical to treat a specific medical problem."
Some of NIDA's current research has focused on the cognitive impairments of the drug, including withdrawal symptoms and social behavior as well as effects on the lungs, heart rate and blood pressure.
Researchers looking to study the medicinal purposes of marijuana also have access to RTI's joints through NIDA. They can apply for an Investigational New Drug application that must be approved by the FDA.
"IND is a mechanism by which a drug company can test out a drug before it gets approved by the [Food and Drug Administration]," Gust explained. "Some studies also look at the potential benefits of marijuana on HIV-infected patients with increasing appetites and decreasing nausea."
The Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics web site also notes that researchers are currently exploring the effects of marijuana on glaucoma, the side effects of chemotherapy and muscular spasticity disorders, as well as the "wasting syndrome" associated with AIDS. Maness, RTI's communications director, added that "some of the cigarettes go to fewer than 10 individuals legally supplied with marijuana under the government's discontinuing compassionate-use program."
According to NIDA's web site, "In 1978, as part of a lawsuit settlement by the Department of Health and Human Services, NIDA began supplying cannabis to patients whose physicians applied for and received [approval] from the FDA. In 1992, [the government] terminated this practice, but decided that NIDA should continue to supply those patients who were receiving cannabis at the time." The marijuana those patients receive is produced along with the rest of NIDA's supply at RTI's secret and secure location.
Gust said that the patients still receiving the joints include one with glaucoma and one with a rheumatoid disorder-in other words, the compassionate-use program never applied to stressed-out college students.
"That's a program for a certain number of patients under the supervision of their doctors so they can use government-issued marijuana mainly to ameliorate their symptoms," Gust said.
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