House Group Challenges FDA

At the Drug War Chronicle

A week after the US Food and Drug Adminstration (FDA) issued a one-page opinion claiming marijuana has no proven medical uses — a position that ignores the much more comprehensive analysis done by the National Academy of Science’s Institute of Medicine in 1999 — a bipartisan group of 24 House members led by Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) has called on the agency to explain its reasoning and offer scientific proof for its position.
“Despite the fact that you are responding to a scientific question, your press release failed to provide any scientific expertise,” the representatives wrote in a Thursday letter to FDA Acting Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. “We call on you to show us the purported scientific evidence for the basis of this response. There is no evidence that you have new scientific proof or that you oversaw clinical trials. It perplexes us that even though the FDA is responsible for protecting public health, the agency has failed to respond adequately to the IOM’s findings seven years after the study’s publication date.”

Representatives who signed the letter: Maurice Hinchey, Ron Paul, Barney Frank, Sam Farr, Tammy Baldwin, Raþl Grijalva, Robert Wexler, Dennis Kucinich, John Conyers, Maxine Waters, Dana Rohrabacher, Jim McDermott, Tom Lantos, Jerrold Nadler, John Olver, Lois Capps, Julia Carson, Peter Stark, Jan Schakowsky, George Miller, Zoe Lofgren, Tom Allen, Barbara Lee, Gary Ackerman