Marijuana Treatment Study on PTSD for Veterans Gets Back on Track

Posted 2015-04-02 16:02 by Grunt Report with 0 comments

A year after the federal government approved a study for the use of marijuana by veterans in treating post-traumatic stress disorder the work may at last get underway.

The National Institute of Drug Abuse on Wednesday informed the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies that it is ready to supply researchers with marijuana needed for the study, Brad Burge, spokesman for MAPS, told Military.com.

The study will mark the first federally approved study in which the subjects will be able to ingest the marijuana by smoking it, he said. It will also be “the first whole-plant marijuana study,” meaning the marijuana will not simply be an extract of the cannabis in a manufactured delivery system, such as a pill.

NIDA’s decision had been a long time coming, according to Burge, but that delay was only one of the setbacks after the Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration and the Drug Enforcement Agency cleared the way for the research last year.

The plan also was sidetracked because it lost the University of Arizona as one of two testing sites when the school fired the lead researcher, Dr. Suzanne Sisley, after the government approved the project. The university did not explain the sudden termination, though reports at the time suggested the school was looking to avoid conflict with Arizona lawmakers opposed to the study.

Some veterans criticized the firing. Ricardo Pereyda, an Iraq War veteran and graduate of the university, launched a petition calling for Sisley’s reinstatement and university support for the study. The petition garnered more than 100,000 names, but the university did not respond.

“I suffered from severe post-traumatic-stress,” Pereyda wrote in the petition. “I was prescribed a cocktail of prescription drugs from the VA for years; they didn’t help.” He said he began using marijuana exclusively in 2010 to treat multiple symptoms of PTSD, including insomnia, depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. He said the marijuana has helped him “live a more full and productive life.”

Shortly after her firing, the state of Colorado awarded Sisley a $2 million grant for her work.

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