[420 Girl]

It's the smell - pungent and slightly citrusy- that first greets visitors to Mahmoud ElSohly's office on the University of Mississippi campus.

Next are pictures lining the hallways of the bright green plants ElSohly has researched for 35 years as chief cultivator in the nation's only legal marijuana farm.

The University of Mississippi Marijuana Project provides marijuana by the bale to licensed researchers throughout the nation. They study the drug through a federal contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Marijuana is grown in a field, nurtured in an artificially lit "grow room," analyzed in labs and stored in drums in two bank-style vaults.

"It's a complicated plant," ElSohly said.

It's complicated not only in its chemical composition but also because of the political and cultural baggage it carries.

Around the nation, policy makers are struggling with legalizing the drug for people who need its medical benefits while lobbyists push for even greater legalization.

"It's a very controversial issue and a very emotional issue," he said. "This is an illegal drug, a controlled substance. If this was milk thistle or any of these other herbal drugs, it would be no problem making this available or an extract available."

Although he said he never has smoked it, ElSohly is a marijuana fan. He is an informed believer in the medical properties of THC, the chemical in the plant that produces a psychoactive "high" but also is being used to give relief to people with chronic ailments such as cancer or Parkinson's disease.

Marijuana, he said, is a true wonder weed that, broken down into its chemical components, can be used for both constipation and diarrhea, he said. ElSohly and his colleagues have spent years studying and isolating the plant's medical effects.

The federal contract pays the university about $480,000 during growing years - less on off years - to provide the cannabis to researchers. Ole Miss has been involved in marijuana research since 1968 and the NIDA contract dates to the mid-1970s.

Federal demand for the plant waxes and wanes, ElSohly said.

But Ole Miss' contract to grow marijuana rankles some who see it as an unfair monopoly.

"It's really handicapped research," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network, which favors legalizing marijuana for medical use and eliminating criminal penalties for possession.

One reason some question the approach at Ole Miss is because the project has a fundamental objection to smoking the plant, in part because of the nature of the university's longstanding federal contract. But ElSohly, a research pharmacist, thinks it is just a bad way to take medicine.

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