DEA Finally Lets Others Grow Research-Grade Cannabis

ust two days ahead of a federal court-ordered deadline, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) says it is “moving forward to facilitate and expand scientific and medical research for marijuana in the United States.”

The announcement earlier this morning represents the elimination of an enormous barrier to cannabis research. For decades, all American scientists who studied cannabis have been forced to obtain their research-grade cannabis from a single farm at the University of Mississippi. That farm operates under a contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

The cannabis produced by the NIDA farm has been widely derided as the worst cannabis grown in America, with THC and CBD levels far below what most patients and consumers enjoy today. The DEA, an agency of the Justice Department, agreed in 2016 to license more growers in order to offer scientists a wider variety of high-quality research material. But those licenses never materialized.

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