At the moment, medical cannabis is legal in twenty-five states as well as Washington, DC, however, because of government regulations, scientists are having a ton of trouble researching the drug. As a result, cultivation and accessibility are being drastically restricted. Not too long ago, the Drug Enforcement Administration got rid of one of the obstacles for scientists studying medical marijuana and its effects. It revealed that it would extend the amount of manufacturers that are able to cultivate and supply cannabis to researchers.
Under the Drug Enforcement Administration’s older limitations, only one institution — the University of Mississippi — was allowed to cultivate research-grade cannabis. John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the forthcoming book “Marijuana: A Short History,” states that the new decision is going to help lead to faster, more understandable medical marijuana research.
“Right now, the monopoly is bad news,” Hudak states. “If you talk to researchers who do clinical experimentation with marijuana, looking for medical efficacy, they’ll tell you that the monopoly creates roadblocks in terms of access, in terms of the speed with which they can get the product, and with the types of strains or potency or compositions of marijuana that they want to use in their research.”
Hudak believes that more competition in the research-grade market is going to make cannabis cultivators more attentive to the demands of researchers. As a result, there should also be more of a variety that will reflect what has already been being sold in dispensaries.
“The medical marijuana that you would get from a dispensary in Colorado or in any of the states that have medical marijuana programs can have very low potency or a composition that has no psychoactive ingredients, all the way up to very high potency marijuana,” Hudak adds. “A lot of researchers want their research to reflect what’s going on in America, and there’re real limitations on that because of the supply from Ole Miss.”
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