by Patrick Appel
Researchers have finally scored some weed to test it as a treatment for PTSD:
As more states move to legalize all or some marijuana use, reform has remained stalled not just by outright federal prohibition, but also by federal policies that have suppressed research on cannabis. On Friday, the federal government took a potentially momentous step back from this position, granting researchers who have for years borne the brunt of this policy access to a legal supply of marijuana. The decision means a psychiatry professor at the University of Arizona who specializes in treating veterans may for the first time be able to perform a triple-blind study on marijuana and post-traumatic stress disorder.
Rick Doblin speculates about FDA recognition:
We’d need $15 or $20 million to make marijuana into a prescription medicine, approved by the FDA. That will probably take five to seven years. What does that $15 to $20 million go toward? This is just a Phase II pilot study, an exploratory study. We’re figuring out what the doses are, whether CBD helps, whether THC is effective on its own, what are the side effects. The money would go then to what is called the Phase III study, and those are the ones that are used to prove safety and efficacy. With that we’ll probably have to treat 400-500 people or more.
This study will give us results and we’ll see how clear the signals that we get are. Is there marijuana helpful a lot or a little? If it’s helpful a lot, then you need fewer people for the bigger study.
The Dish 