Congress is set to march up the steps of the Capitol later this week in order to introduce legislation aimed at changing the federal government’s old policies on cannabis research. The goal of the bipartisan movement is to make it easier for the scientific community to learn about marijuana and figure out the medical benefits of the drug. Cannabis has already been legalized for medical use in over half the country. A recent report from the Santa Cruze Sentinel reports that many representatives plan on introducing the “Medical Marijuana Research Act of 2016” to the House in order to ensure “policy decisions about the role of medical marijuana are based on science and facts instead of rhetoric.”
“As a physician who has conducted (National Institutes of Health) sponsored research, I can’t stress enough how critical this legislation is to the scientific community,” said Representative Harris, a lawmaker that’s known for being a serious opponent on legalization, in a statement. “Our drug policy was never intended to act as an impediment to conducting legitimate medical research. We need empirical scientific evidence to clearly determine whether marijuana has medicinal benefits and, if so, how it would be used most effectively. This legislation is crucial to that effort because it removes the unnecessary administrative barriers that deter qualified researchers from rigorously studying medical marijuana.”
A Senate version of the bill will be introduced soon by Hawaii, Utah, Delaware, and North Carolina Senators. Although the details of the bill are still unknown, it will target the three issues that have prevented researchers from exploring the therapeutic benefits of cannabis. It is rumored that the bill will force the federal government to allow more growers in order to supply research marijuana.
Although there is a growing number of states that have legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes, the federal government has continued to keep the drug at a schedule 1 control substance- which means that it has no known medicinal benefit and is highly addictive.
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