(Photo credit: Michel Porro/Getty Images)
NIDA wants scientists to weigh in on marijuana research.
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is requesting
information from scientists interested in researching marijuana and
cannabinoids found in the plant, according to a recent government notice.
NIDA is seeking information from scientists on which
specific marijuana varieties or marijuana-derived products they’re
interested in studying.
More from NIDA:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recognizes that marijuana and/or its constituent compounds hold both risk and potential benefits to health. To date, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved one cannabinoid and one cannabinoid-like substance for medical use – synthetically-derived dronabinol, which is the pure isomer (-)-delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, a constituent of marijuana), and nabilone, which is a synthetic substance similar to THC.
While “a number of varieties of marijuana with differing
constituent profiles” have already been made available for research
purposes, the department wants to know if researchers are interested in
studying other varieties of cannabis or cannabis products that aren’t
currently available to the scientific community, according to the
notice.
NIDA will be accepting responses on the matter until Sept. 15, 2016.
It sounds like a promising step for the medical cannabis
movement, but not everyone is confident about NIDA’s underlying
motivations.
Per Marijuana.com:
While that’s great to hear, the MMJ [medical marijuana] community has felt the malicious sting of the FDA’s “good intentions” before.
Historically ignoring the synergistic impact of the whole plant’s compounds and cannabinoids, many believe the FDA seriously fumbled the epileptic football when they granted an Orphan Drug Designation to the synthetically derived Epidiolex, over the development of a superior whole plant alternative.
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