Two years after an administrative-law judge recommended that the federal government should allow the University of Massachusetts at Amherst to grow marijuana for medical research, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has just said no, The Boston Globe reported.

Lyle E. Craker, a professor of plant and soil sciences at Amherst, wanted to grow cannabis for his research on medicinal plants. That permission would have made his only the second lab in the nation authorized to cultivate pot, breaking the University of Mississippi’s monopoly.

Mr. Craker first applied for a DEA permit in 2001 and was turned down in 2004. In an administrative hearing, he and his backers argued for a reversal of that ruling, saying that Mississippi’s product was not potent enough for research purposes, and that the government had released too little of it to researchers. In February 2007 an administrative-law judge issued a nonbinding decision in his favor.

But in a final ruling today, the DEA said the current supply of marijuana for research was adequate and that a second laboratory would not be in the public interest. —Charles Huckabee