Will Pot Treat Combat Vets with PTSD? The Government Doesn't Know and Doesn't Care

The courts may have decided that marijuana has no medical use, but how would they know unless they study it? Federal red tape is keeping an Arizona researcher from looking into benefits pot might have for vets with PTSD.

Dr. Sue Sisley received the OK to research the effectiveness of using marijuana to treat combat vets from the FDA in 2011, but the National Institute on Drug Abuse refuses to authorize the study. The NIDA is the only federal agency that grows marijuana for legitimate research.

"It's in the pipeline waiting in limbo until we can persuade NIDA to sell us the study drug and the DEA to give us a permit so we're allowed to store the drug on campus," Sisley told Phoenix's CBS5.

But Dr. Richard Strand with the Arizona Wellness Chamber of Commerce is much more frank in his assessment of the situation: "NIDA will not fund any research whose goal is to find benefits of medical marijuana."