Hidden within a securely monitored, nondescript laboratory on the
University of Mississippi campus in Oxford lies a pothead’s dream come
true.
Heavy-duty cardboard barrels and boxes stored in a high-security
freezer hold pounds and pounds of marijuana buds. In the same freezer,
hundreds of rolled joints are stored in cans. In the climate-controlled
room next door, bright-green marijuana plants stand five feet tall, as
if ready for a High Times close-up.
Outside the Coy W. Waller Laboratory Complex, an empty field awaits
cuttings from those indoor plants, where at some time in the future, an
outdoor marijuana garden will flourish under the watchful eye of the
National Center for Natural Products Research’s Marijuana Project.
But this “dank” won’t be available for the bongs and pipes of Cheech
& Chong fans. The marijuana grown here is used strictly for
government-approved research purposes. In fact, the Marijuana Project
at Ole Miss is the only facility in the country legally allowed to grow
marijuana for research.
In its last growing season, in 2007, the university produced 400
kilos — around 880 pounds — for the National Institute on
Drug Abuse (NIDA).
In addition to growing pot for research, the Marijuana Project
analyzes samples of seized marijuana from all over the country. In
mid-May, Ole Miss released a report stating that illicitly produced
marijuana contains an average 10.1 percent of its active ingredient,
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Compared with THC levels of around 1
percent in the 1970s and 4 percent in the early ’80s, today’s street
marijuana is more potent than ever.
Growing Government Pot
Inside a small darkroom, a set of grow lights are focused on a pair
of fully mature marijuana plants, boasting flowering buds and standing
well over the head of Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, director of the university’s
pot-growing operations. The doctor gently rubs one of the buds and
smells his fingers.
“The smell is very strong,” says the mild-mannered director in a
heavy Egyptian accent. (In fact, with the large amount of marijuana
stored onsite, the entire Waller Complex has the skunk-like smell of a
stoner’s basement.)
Hundreds of other indoor plants in the grow room are kept alive in a
suspended state, meaning they’re not allowed to grow or bud, as a way
to preserve cuttings for the outdoor garden. This year, NIDA has yet to
request a large-scale outdoor “grow,” but when they do, cuttings from
the indoor plants will provide the starter material.
The Marijuana Project’s government contract from NIDA allows the
school to grow marijuana to be distributed for research across the
country. Marijuana is distributed to researchers after they’ve gone
through the proper channels with the Food and Drug Administration and
the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). For example, the National Eye
Institute has procured marijuana from Ole Miss to study the effects of
cannabinoids (the chemical components in marijuana) on intraocular
pressure.
“With marijuana being [a Schedule I drug], it’s only available to
investigators through the federal government. They’re the only entity
that can distribute marijuana, and they have possession of all the
marijuana that’s [legally] produced,” ElSohly says. “We are acting as
an arm of the
[U.S.] government.”
The Marijuana Project began in 1968, just a few years after THC was
discovered to be the active ingredient in marijuana. The federal
government was looking for standardized material to research, which
meant that marijuana would need to be grown under carefully controlled
conditions to regulate the amount of THC and other cannabinoids in the
finished product.
The federal government issued a request for proposals, and Ole Miss
was chosen for a three-year contract. The contract is renewed every
five years, and the university must submit a new bid each time.
“If another organization came along with equal capabilities that
could do this for a little less money, we could lose this,” ElSohly
says. “We have no idea who applies each time or even if anyone else
applies at all.”
But since the Marijuana Project has been housed at Ole Miss for more
than 40 years, it doesn’t seem likely they’ll lose the contract anytime
soon. ElSohly has been with the project since 1975, when he switched
from studying poison ivy to researching marijuana under the project’s
former director, Carlton Turner.
When Turner left to serve as President Ronald Reagan’s drug czar in
1980, ElSohly was promoted to oversee the growing operation, research,
and analysis of seized marijuana.
Bianca Phillips
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly oversees the Marijuana Project at Ole Miss.
Each year that NIDA makes a request for an outdoor grow, ElSohly and
his staff plant and tend the crop, followed by a harvest, and a drying,
manicuring, and de-seeding stage, before the marijuana is ready to be
granted to researchers.
After being tested for quality assurance, the pot is stored in a
large walk-in freezer maintained at a temperature of around 16 degrees.
Some pot is shipped to be rolled into cigarettes and then sent back to
the Waller Complex to be distributed to researchers.
“The cigarettes are not made here, unless there’s a requirement for
high-potency material, which doesn’t lend itself to mechanized
production of cigarettes, because it gets resinous and gums the
machine. We use a small hand roller for that,” says ElSohly. “But if we
need them in bulk, like say 60,000 cigarettes, we have a subcontract
with a company in North Carolina.”
During growing seasons, the Marijuana Project sometimes employs Ole
Miss students to help weed (no pun intended) the garden and harvest the
finished product. One would assume a marijuana farm on a college campus
would lead to a few security issues, but ElSohly says that’s not the
case.
“The project has been here for a long time, and, of course, people
always want to know where it is and what we’re doing. But we haven’t
had a problem,” ElSohly says.
That’s likely due to the presence of security cameras in every nook
and cranny of the Waller Complex. The outdoor garden, surrounded by a
tall double fence topped with barbed wire, also is monitored by several
cameras. During the growing season, an armed guard perches in a
watchtower at the garden’s entrance.
courtesy of the nida marijuana project at the university of mississippi
Rolled joints are distributed to marijuana researchers across the country.
Search and Seizure
On the countertop in a stark white laboratory at the Waller Complex,
a white cardboard box holds numerous clear plastic packages, filed by
DEA case numbers.
ElSohly lifts a plastic pack from the box, revealing tight little
nuggets of what used to be some pot dealer’s prized “kine bud” (slang
for high-potency marijuana). Other packs reveal some
not-so-high-quality samples of what pot smokers refer to as “dirt
weed.”
Each package holds less than an ounce from various drug seizures
across the country.
“We receive confiscated materials from the DEA and state eradication
programs, and then we analyze them for potency, THC content, and other
cannabinoids,” ElSohly says. “We usually get somewhere between 2,000
and 4,000 seizures a year to analyze.”
Once pot is seized, samples are sent to one of eight DEA labs across
the country. ElSohly’s team makes requests for samples of available
products, including hashish and hash oil. A small amount of pot from
each batch is put through a process that creates a liquid marijuana
extract.
Inside the lab, a couple of female researchers in white lab coats
are sending tiny vials of liquid extract through a gas chromatography
machine. The machine analyzes each vial and produces a computer readout
of how much THC and other cannabinoids are present in the sample. This
is how the Marijuana Project recently determined the average 10 percent
THC levels in today’s illicit weed.
“It’s very important to know what kind of material is being consumed
around the country,” ElSohly says. “It’s an abused drug, so we need to
know what people are abusing. It’s important not only from a standpoint
of the health consequences but from a research standpoint.”
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Small samples of seized marijuana are sent to Ole Miss for testing.
That’s because researchers must test marijuana with different
potencies to determine the effects on patients with varying levels of
THC tolerance.
ElSohly says it’s only natural that illicit marijuana is getting
stronger, since users grow more tolerant of its effects with repeated
use.
“The market demands higher potency all the time, and the
higher-potency marijuana is more expensive and creates less bulk,”
ElSohly says. “The producers have gotten more sophisticated in the way
they produce the drug and how they prepare the material for the
market.”
ElSohly explains that illegal growers increasingly favor a method
that only cultivates material from female marijuana plants, meaning
there are no seeds but only flowering buds. The buds hold the highest
concentration of THC.
In the Bum
In addition to sampling seized pot and producing marijuana for other
medical researchers, the Ole Miss Marijuana Project also has developed
a few THC-based medical products of its own. In the 1990s, ElSohly and
his team developed a new “bottom line” method to administer THC to
patients.
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The THC suppository was designed as an alternative to oral THC-based
medication, such as Marinol (currently available in a gelatin capsule).
Though marijuana is not an FDA-approved medical treatment, THC has been
approved to treat nausea and stimulate appetite in cancer and AIDS
patients.
“It’s used when cancer patients are going through chemotherapy and
are having problems with nausea and vomiting, and it also has an
appetite-stimulating activity that helps AIDS patients experiencing
wasting syndrome,” ElSohly says.
But ElSohly says THC pills have some drawbacks, such as a higher
risk of psychological side effects after the chemical is metabolized in
the liver, an unavoidable consequence of the medication passing through
the stomach. Also, patients suffering from nausea run the risk of
throwing up the pill before it takes effect.
“The suppository came about because of those disadvantages,” ElSohly
says. “And also with the idea that a suppository is not abusable.
People won’t take a suppository just to get high.”
Administered rectally, the THC suppository doesn’t pass through the
liver and is less likely to produce a psychological high. Its medical
effects last 12 hours, much longer than the four-hour effectiveness of
Marinol. However, the THC suppository isn’t commercially available yet.
ElSohly says the formulation was licensed to a pharmaceutical company
in the ’90s, but it lost the funding to produce and market the
product.
“It’s up for grabs now, and we hope some company will eventually
take it on,” ElSohly says.
He’s also working on another THC drug with a transmucosal delivery
system, which means the patient absorbs the drug through their gums.
Similar to nicotine skin patches, the transmucosal patch adheres to the
space above the gumline inside the mouth. THC is delivered through the
skin.
Though 13 states have legalized medical pot — and Tennessee
state senator Beverly Marrero recently proposed a bill that would make
it legal in Tennessee — ElSohly says smoking marijuana isn’t the
best way to administer the drug to patients:
“In my opinion, that’s just smoking the drug to get an effect.
That’s not a good pharmaceutical way to administer a drug, for obvious
reasons.”
In states such as California and New Mexico, some medical marijuana
patients may grow their own plants for personal use.
But as more states debate decriminalizing medical marijuana, the
cultivation and research at Marijuana Project at Ole Miss moves
forward, high above the fray.
