Iowans for Medical Marijuana Blog

# re: Oral Argument to Remove Marijuana from Schedule I

Dear Carl,
I wonder, in your argument, if you have included references to patent #6,630,507, awarded back in 2003, not by, but TO the United States Government on the medical uses of cannabis. The assignee on this patent is the US Dept. of Health and Human Services, and it was based on research done at the NIH. It claims that cannabinoids are useful in the prevention and treatment of a wide range of diseases including stroke, trauma, auto-immune disorders, HIV dementia, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Wouldn't the presence of this legal document in the public domain show, unequivocally, that the USDHHS recognizes the validity of the medical uses of cannabis.

To say otherwise would be like saying: vitamin C is good, but oranges are illegal.

If the pushback is that this is a patent for other cannabinoids rather than THC, then the counter argument is: THC is already prescribed in its pure form (drabidinol). So if all the other cannabinoids are medically useful, and THC is medically useful, then exactly what are we classifying as Schedule i --- Cellulose?
Sincerely,
Brinna

# re: Oral Argument to Remove Marijuana from Schedule I

That would depend on the language in the patent. Previously, the government has argued that derivatives of cannabis are not being used as medicine, claiming that they are manufactured synthetically without the use of marijuana.

HIA v. DEA, 357 F.3d 1012 (9th Cir. 2004), says that synthetic THC is scheduled separately from natural THC because natural THC is included in marijuana (so natural THC is in whatever schedule that marijuana is in).

I think the patent is relevant to my argument, but I need to nail down how it enhances my argument. The two rescheduling decisions on synthetic THC in 1986 and 1999 did not affect the scheduling of the naturally occurring identical substance. In other words, dronabinol, by definition, does not contain naturally occurring THC.

So, the question on this patent is whether these compounds are being extracted or made synthetically. I'm not even sure that distinction is valid, but the courts have made that distinction and seem to think it is valid.

I have a perfect argument without even mentioning this patent, so I'm trying to figure out how to work it in. My argument is that once a state has accepted marijuana's medical use, everything else is irrelevant. Federal scheduling requires "no accepted medical use in treatment in the United States" so the question of whether marijuana has accepted medical use has been answered and nothing else is relevant.

Nevertheless, I think that providing some background information is worthwhile and this patent would fall into that category.