Legal Pot’s No Pipe Dream

The Supreme Court handed a major defeat to state medical marijuana laws this week, but pro-pot advocates said a little-noticed lawsuit wending its way through the courts might yet make legal pot a reality.

The suit hinges on a Food and Drug Administration regulation that says the agency can’t approve marijuana — or any other substance — as a medicine unless research shows it’s safe. But the government, which controls the only legal crop in the country, won’t give scientists any marijuana to test, according to researchers who want to perform safety studies.

The impasse led to a lawsuit in July 2004 pitting the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS, against the Drug Enforcement Agency as well as the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institute on Drug Abuse, or NIDA, for obstructing medical marijuana research.