Boyd Crowder
Teem MiCr0B35
Federal spending on medical marijuana research is pathetic
The federal government's most disputed marijuana policy decision may come down to funding — for research.
Under the Controlled Substances Act, the feds consider marijuana to have no medical value, classifying pot under the harshest possible classification — a schedule 1 drug. The government argues this is justified because there have been no large-scale clinical trials proving pot has medical value.
Maybe so. But a new analysis by News21, a Carnegie-Knight national student reporting project based at Arizona State University, suggests the federal government is part of the reason this research isn't happening.
Out of $1.4 billion the National Institutes of Health spent on marijuana research from 2008 to 2014, just $297 million went to studying marijuana's effects on the brain and potential medicinal benefits. The rest went to studying pot abuse and addiction. To put marijuana's non-abuse research funding in perspective, the feds spent about two times as much on non-abuse research for opiates, a much more established drug type.
Moar Read : http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9180047/marijuana-research-federal-government
The federal government's most disputed marijuana policy decision may come down to funding — for research.
Under the Controlled Substances Act, the feds consider marijuana to have no medical value, classifying pot under the harshest possible classification — a schedule 1 drug. The government argues this is justified because there have been no large-scale clinical trials proving pot has medical value.
Maybe so. But a new analysis by News21, a Carnegie-Knight national student reporting project based at Arizona State University, suggests the federal government is part of the reason this research isn't happening.
Out of $1.4 billion the National Institutes of Health spent on marijuana research from 2008 to 2014, just $297 million went to studying marijuana's effects on the brain and potential medicinal benefits. The rest went to studying pot abuse and addiction. To put marijuana's non-abuse research funding in perspective, the feds spent about two times as much on non-abuse research for opiates, a much more established drug type.
Moar Read : http://www.vox.com/2015/8/20/9180047/marijuana-research-federal-government
