The extremely complex bureaucratic process required for clinical trials of marijuana in the United States has made many researchers give up on the idea of researching it.
As pot stores begin to open in Vancouver and around the state, there’s a lot more we don’t know about the active ingredients in marijuana, a consequence of strict anti-drug laws and a federal classification that says the plant has no benefits and is unsafe to use.
Even animal studies, while not as strict as human trials, require “a lot of hoops to jump through” for researchers that want to learn more, said Rebecca Craft, a researcher at Washington State University,.
“It’s unfortunate, but you can count on one hand the number of human studies done in this country,” she said. “It’s possible to get approval, but people are just very leery, I think for political reasons.”
And those that make it through the process can face a whole other set of issues.
There was another WSU animal marijuana researcher, psychology professor Michael Morgan, who had a federally funded and approved study to look at the drug’s potential as pain medicine in 2009 at WSU Vancouver. At the time he was awarded $148,438 in federal stimulus funds from the National Institutes of Health.
But Morgan ended up in Republican Dino Rossi’s cross hairs during Rossi’s 2010 campaign for a U.S. Senate seat. Rossi, who lost the campaign, publicly said several disparaging things about Morgan’s efforts to study the plant.
“Washington state taxpayers are tired of their money going up in smoke,” Rossi’s office said in a press release at the time. “This bill isn’t going to stimulate anything other than sales of Cheetos.”
The National Park Service will continue operating the Pearson Air Museum — as it has since terminating an operating agreement with the Fort Vancouver National Trust in February 2013 — after the trust decided it wasn’t financially viable to resume museum operations.
The initial split stemmed from a difference of opinion on a number of issues, including what activities and exhibits should be allowed at the museum.
Six months of mediation came to a close this week, yielding nothing but regret as the Park Service, trust and Vancouver issued statements Friday that were so carefully worded they could have been from a celebrity couple announcing their marriage has ended but they’ll remain committed partners for the sake of the children.
It’s not clear whether the antique aircraft that had been on display will return to the museum. Bader said those details need to be reworked now that the Trust has said it can’t operate the museum. The Park Service allows items with direct ties to Pearson Field and the 1937 Chkalov landing — the world’s first transpolar flight — but didn’t want general aviation items the Trust had on display.
Vancouver attorney Steve Horenstein, chairman of the trust’s Board of Trustees, said Friday that the trust will be looking at expanding its educational programs and continue offering aviation summer camps at the Pearson Field Education Center. Outreach activities and partnerships will continue as well, he said.
Among community activist Mark Maggiora’s numerous dreams for this area is permanently and conveniently anchoring as many productive, user-friendly green spaces as possible to the land so they’re within short “wheelbarrow walks” of — well, everywhere.
Maggiora founded a nonprofit redevelopment agency called Americans Building Community that’s aimed at revitalizing the neighborhoods along the central Fourth Plain corridor. He and his group have teamed with the Bagley Downs Neighborhood Association — such as it is — and with the Southwest Washington Community Land Trust to start this new garden just north of the Jim Parsley Community Center.
The new plots laid out and planted by volunteers Friday take up most of the sloping front and rear yards of an affordable ranch house at 4912 Nicholson Ave. built by the land trust. The house isn’t yet occupied, but Maggiora said a closing is not far off.
The smaller front plot will be for people who want to pay a minimal fee in exchange for their own private garden space — the way people who work the city’s community gardens do.
The larger back plot, 24 beds in two rows, will grow food for donation to the central Clark County Food Bank — or even better, Food Bank board member Bill Coleman said, for an even more local food pantry that feeds people right in this neighborhood. While the food bank is always grateful for donations — and excited about fresh produce that comes straight from Clark County soil — best of all is when that food can skip a middle step and go straight from ground to pantry.
A really successful effort will even spawn for-profit microbusinesses, he said.
“I can see a very local distribution system,” he said. “Picture a guy with a bicycle and food cart going up and down the street selling what he’s grown or gleaned. Like the milkman of old, making deliveries every morning.”
Opponents of a proposal to build the Northwest’s largest oil-by-rail transfer terminal at the Port of Vancouver have packed public hearings and repeatedly pounded a message to port commissioners: cancel the lease with Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies.
Now, Commission President Brian Wolfe, while not in favor of revoking the lease, wants a legal opinion about the port’s ability to abort the agreement. “I feel like we’re not being responsive to citizens who are showing up (and) asking us to cancel (the lease),” Wolfe said. “I feel like they deserve a response.”
It appears doubtful the port will develop such a report. Commissioners Jerry Oliver and Nancy Baker say they want to let the state-level review of the oil terminal take its course.
In the months ahead, opponents are expected to continue to try to capsize the oil-facility contract, including pressuring port commissioners during public hearings and further pressing their case in court. They face a port confident in the legality of its lease and determined to see the permitting process through to the end.
Theresa Wagner, communications manager for the port, said the port structured the lease so that if the companies don’t meet certain conditions, the port may opt out of the contract. A primary condition requires Tesoro-Savage to obtain the necessary state and federal permits. If they don’t, the port would have grounds to terminate the lease. The port also crafted the lease to require the companies to meet the highest possible safety standards, Wagner said. For example, the document allows the port to incorporate any updated or additional safety standards that regulators may impose in the months ahead. On Aug. 29, Tesoro Corp. and Savage Companies submitted their permit application to the state Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council. The companies want to construct and operate a $110 million oil-by-rail facility capable of handling as much as 380,000 barrels of crude per day. The companies say the oil would be hauled in from North Dakota’s Bakken shale formation for eventual conversion into transportation fuels at U.S. refineries.
Incentive options for Banfield Pet Hospital, which announced plans last week to build a new corporate headquarters in Vancouver, will be discussed by the Vancouver City Council at a May 12 workshop at City Hall, city spokeswoman Barbara Ayers said Friday.
The proposed incentives were included in a memorandum of understanding.
Banfield Pet Hospital, which bills itself as the nation’s largest veterinary practice, plans to build a 230,000-square-foot office complex in the Columbia Tech Center development at Southeast Mill Plain Boulevard and 184th Avenue.
Ayers said the MOU wasn’t a contract, but a statement of intent with a detailed list of ideas for the city council to discuss.
Among the proposed incentives, most of which would require changes to city ordinances:
o The city’s annual $20,000 employee surcharge (currently capped at $50 per employee and 400 employees) would be waived for five years.
o The city would offer a 50 percent discount on traffic impact fees, up to a maximum of $200,000.
o The city would support Banfield if the business wants to seek a Community Development Block Grant loan, which is a federal grant.
o The city would build a one-acre public dog park next to the Banfield facility, at an estimated cost of $150,000.
o Banfield gets to rename a nearby nonarterial street.
