The lawsuit contends that the government is delaying applications to grow marijuana for studies that might support medical use of the drug.

"There is an urgent need for an alternative supply of marijuana for medical research," said Lyle Craker, director of the Medicinal Plant Program at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. He said that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) "maintains a monopoly on research marijuana. Many researchers believe that NIDA's monopoly is an obstacle to getting needed studies done on a timely basis."

Marijuana used in research must come from a federally contracted farm in Mississippi. UMass has been waiting three years to have its application considered to grow marijuana for federally approved researchers. The government also hasn't acted on a one-year-old application from Chemic Laboratories in Canton, Mass., to import 10 grams of marijuana from the Netherlands to research the Volcano Vaporizer, a device that could provide a nonsmoking method for delivering the medicinal value of marijuana to patients.

In addition to NIDA, the lawsuits filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia names the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Besides Craker, lawsuits were filed by Rick Doblin, president of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and Valerie Corral, co-founder of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in Santa Cruz, Calif., who uses marijuana to control epileptic seizures.

"Every day DEA delays the applications necessary to initiate research is another day that the patients with illnesses susceptible to treatment using marijuana must either suffer otherwise remediable pain, or risk arrest to use marijuana as medicine," said the scientists.

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