In a long-awaited move, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is finally ending its moratorium on marijuana research, which had been a heavy weight dragging down our understanding of cannabis. The agency announced the imminent distribution of at least three new licenses to grow research-grade marijuana, quadrupling the number of federally approved cannabis growers.
Currently, there is only one federally approved grower, the University of Mississippi, which has been an issue pointed out by numerous actors in the cannabis industry, including the Shepherd Express.
The fact that only the University of Mississippi is an approved grower means that all research on cannabis on American soil must be conducted with plants grown there. As indicated in lawsuits brought by researchers against the DEA over the years, the cannabis grown by the University of Mississippi is in fact of incredibly poor quality. Researchers found that these plants are closer to non-psychoactive hemp than commercially available cannabis in states where it was legalized. The University, due to the quality of the soil and seeds and the utter lack of diversity, provides cannabis that is extremely different from what people actually consume, making it a poor object of research to understand legal marijuana.
“While most states in the U.S. recognize that cannabis has medical value, the DEA says otherwise, pointing to the absence of clinical research,” said Sue Sisley, researcher for the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), which sued the DEA to be allowed to become a licensed grower. “But at the same time, government regulations and bureaucracy prevent researchers like SRI from ever doing the clinical research the DEA has overtly demanded.”
Progress Halted Under Trump
In 2016, under President Obama, the DEA promised to increase the number of authorized marijuana manufacturers in the immediate future—but then, Donald Trump got into the White House, and any attempt at progress was immediately halted. Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a staunch enemy of legal marijuana, blocked the dozens of applications received by the DEA following their 2016 pledge.
After four years of legal battle, researchers from the SRI successfully sued the DEA, forcing them to release a memo which the DEA had used in secret to justify denying applications for potential marijuana manufacturers. The document reveals that the United States had been in violation of international treaties regarding the management of marijuana by government agencies; the Justice Department indicated clearly that no new growing licenses could be distributed until the DEA complied with international law. Now that the document was made public, the DEA was forced to comply and release a new rule making it possible to distribute new licenses.
Finally, in the first positive marijuana-related move from President Joe Biden’s administration, the cork popped, and applications are not blocked anymore. One could argue it is due to the repeated lawsuits from the scientific community and the now-public proof that the U.S. government was violating international law to stunt research on marijuana, rather than due to actual political will to move towards progress. Nonetheless, the SRI, as well at least two other organizations, received notice from the DEA that their applications were accepted.
It is unclear how long it will take for these organizations to start concretely growing research-grade cannabis, and the DEA also chose to be vague—out of 41 applications, they have announced that several were accepted without providing an exact number. But in any case, this marks the end of the 50-year-long monopoly that the University of Mississippi had on federally approved cannabis. This will open the door to a lot more research and a greater understanding of the substance.
