In a new report that was released on Tuesday, researchers at the Brookings Institution called on the federal government to eradicate all obstacles stopping medical marijuana research in the United States.
“The federal government is stifling medical research in a rapidly transforming area of public policy that has consequences for public health and public safety,” John Hudak and Grace Wallack write in the report.“Statutory, regulatory, bureaucratic, and cultural barriers have paralyzed science and threatened the integrity of research freedom in this area.”
Making it clear that medical marijuana has already been legalized in many states, the report debates that the conflicting federal policies are “interfering with the relationship between doctor and patient.” Even in areas where medical marijuana has been legalized, doctors, patients and researchers find it extremely difficult to find get out of the gray area between state and federal policies.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) has classified marijuana as a drug with “no medically accepted use” and a “high potential for abuse” since 1972. In order to change this classification, there would likely need to be tons of research conducted. Changing into Schedule 2 would give the drug potential to be used medically.
“Moving marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II would signal to the medical community that FDA and NIH are ready to take medical marijuana research seriously, and help overcome a government-sponsored chilling effect on research that manifests in direct and indirect ways,” Hudak and Wallack reported.
In the past, prohibition groups have stated that rescheduling marijuana would be “a symbolic victory for advocates who want to legalize marijuana.” However, academic researchers have argued for a long time that federal restrictions on Schedule 1 drugs, make actual research “difficult and in many cases almost impossible.” According to Hudak and Wallack, federal policies have made a “circular policy trap that hinders scientific research.” The circular trap is that research into medical marijuana is restrained by the Schedule 1 classification and there is a Schedule 1 classification because there isn’t enough research.
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