“The war on drugs is a colossal failure, but it gallops on nonetheless,” Grinspoon said.

Grinspoon spoke in defense of marijuana’s soothing properties when used on a medical prescription. He said protease inhibitors, drugs that help combat AIDS, cause extreme nausea—and taking marijuana eliminates this side-effect and allows people afflicted with the disease to eat without discomfort.

But marijuana currently cannot be tested for medicinal purposes since it falls on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Schedule 1 list—for drugs that are considered to have no medical use.

Testing can only begin if it is moved onto the FDA’s Schedule 2, a classification for drugs that the agency believes might have medicinal value.

But since the cost of testing a drug could be as high as $800 million, Grinspoon said he did not think many drug companies would pay for the necessary tests. Marijuana is a plant—and therefore cannot be patented—so companies would be unlikely to help recoup their testing expenses, he said.

The forum was sponsored by The Harvard Coalition for Drug Policy Reform and the Institute of Politics.