We The People demand that the United States Federal Government conduct a clinical trial to prove to us that ingested cannabis chemicals have zero medical value or reschedule cannabis immediately. 

Cannabis proved to have medical value and safety for all mammals for millenniums. It was even part of the U.S. Pharmacopeia as an extract/tincture from 1850 to 1942. It was prescribed for things like pain, muscle spasms, vomiting, GI disorders, and inflammation. Then the federal government came along and declared that it contained no benefit at all after doing no research to support the claim. Cannabis was forcibly removed from the Pharmacopeia and made illegal for all purposes. Today it listed as a Schedule 1 drug under the Controlled Substances Act, a category that legally defines it as having zero accepted medical use, despite the fact that 20 states and Washington D.C. now accept it as a medicine. Because of its Schedule 1 status, it is illegal to prescribe and prohibitively difficult to research in America. 

Many years later, it is now understood how one plant can help with so many different conditions. Modern science has shown that all vertebrates, and even some invertebrates, actually make their own form of cannabis-like compounds inside the body, called cannabinoids. These chemicals are used to stimulate internal cannabinoid receptors and control a wide variety of important physiological processes. This system is called the endocannabinoid system. Studies show that a lack of actively stimulated cannabinoid receptors will cause the body to stop functioning properly and develop any number of conditions.

Fortunately, cannabinoids originating from outside the body are also able to act upon the receptors. Cannabinoids can be found in a variety of plants, but in no other plant are they more numerous and medically exciting than in cannabis. Because real cannabis is illegal to work with, researchers have created artificial cannabis chemicals to test in the lab and on animals. Studies show that when applied correctly (not smoked), these chemicals are able to have a positive impact on many forms of illness that currently have no known cure. These include many types of cancer, autoimmune, neurodegenerative, inflammatory, and age related diseases. 

Despite the remarkable therapeutic potential, there has never been an official study on the disease fighting ability of ingested cannabis chemicals on humans. There are hundreds of people claiming that eating cannabis has helped restore their health, but they lack the proper scientific documentation for the feds to acknowledge them. 

Therefore, we demand a double-blind, randomized, controlled clinical trial starting immediately to test if at least one of the 85+ cannabinoids unique to the cannabis plant provides any disease fighting benefit to humans. We know that cannabinoids are safe to test directly on humans because of their extraordinarily low toxicity. The study should include a group of people with a variety of diseases and conditions who will consume cannabinoids for a period of at least eight weeks.

If any discernible health benefits arise, then at minimum, move the cannabis plant to a Schedule where scientists can properly research it and doctors can prescribe it to patients who desperately need it.

4/10/2013 UPDATE:

The first ever clinical trial testing the ability of ingested cannabinoids to treat any disease in humans is now underway. A research team at the Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba, Israel is in the recruitment stage of a trial that will be investigating the efficacy of oil containing the cannabinoids THC and CBD given by mouth for the induction of remission in Crohn's disease. The study is scheduled to be completed in March of 2015.

Follow this link for more information. http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/study/NCT01826188?term=cannabinoid&lup_s=03%2F11%2F2013&lup_d=30