December 7, 2018 For anyone following the medical cannabis space, there is nothing more frustrating than hearing members of the medical establishment summarily dismissing cannabis based on a lack of supporting data. Of course there’s a dearth of data; blame it on Schedule 1!
Because of cannabis’ draconian Schedule 1 classification as a highly dangerous and addictive substance, as of today, any scientist in the US who wants to study cannabis faces a long and arduous process to secure the approvals needed to start their research, and the actual marijuana to study from the US’s single sanctioned source at the University of Mississippi. .
But the groundswell of demand for medicinal cannabis rumbling across the nation is making the issue difficult to ignore. Yesterday, US Surgeon General Jerome Adams went on record expressing his concerns over the cannabis status quo. Speaking at a Police Assisted Addiction Recovery Initiative conference, he said, “We need to look at the way we schedule different medications across the board, because one of the concerns that I have with marijuana is the difficulty that the folks have to do research on it, because of the scheduling system.”
In Pennsylvania, the drive for clinical data on cannabis is boring a hole through federal prohibition via the gray area of state’s rights. In a bid to position itself as a national leader in medical cannabis research, Pennsylvania came up with what it considered to be an innovative solution to bypass federal prohibition and cannabis research obstacles. It added to its medicinal cannabis legislation a clinical research program that enabled eight Pennsylvania medical schools to partner with specific cannabis growers and processors who would supply them with research material.
Yet even the best laid plans can go awry. After it became clear that many of the growers selected as research partners had scored poorly in the state’s application process, a group of growers initiated a lawsuit challenging the validity of the process, implying that “pay to play” was at play. And yesterday, Pennsylvania officials disqualified all eight growers that were partnered with respective medical schools, sending them back to the drawing board after years of planning and millions of dollars invested.
In the larger scheme of things, however, aside from an indication that the system is somehow working, this setback feels like a barely perceivable bump in the steamroller’s path towards federal decriminalization.
