United States: DEA authorizes more growers to supply cannabis to researchers

This is a first since… 1968. For 53 years, the University of Mississippi has been the one and only organization authorized to supply cannabis to American researchers wishing to study the plant. The problem is that the university outsources the cultivation to a public agency who doesn't have a green thumb. The flowers produced are therefore of poor quality. Or even pitiful. Coming soon, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, will authorize a few more facilities to send flower extracts to scientists.

«This is an important step toward improving medical and scientific research.", ", the agency said in a press release. »The DEA will put an end to this system, soon allowing other organizations to be authorized to produce cannabis for research." The drug enforcement agency does not specify how many cannabis growers will receive a permit, but simply refers to a «number of licenses.».

So far, only one future winner has been announced: Steven Groff, a physicist from York, Pennsylvania. The DEA called him last Friday to tell him he had been selected. «We're going to grow cannabis for scientific research, and then sell it worldwide for the first time!", he says in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. »I know what this plant can do, but we need specific data. That's exactly what was missing."

Trump's Attorney General was putting the brakes on

«We've been waiting for this decision for so long! I can't believe it's finally happened.», Sue Sisley gushes in the business newspaper. This Arizona-based researcher had long opposed this DEA restriction. She had even filed a lawsuit in 2019 to have it removed.

In fact, the DEA has begun considering ending this system as early as August 2016. At the time, Barack Obama was in office at the White House. The atmosphere was therefore fairly positive, and some scientists even submitted a license application to the Drug Enforcement Administration. But a few months later, in November 2020, Donald Trump arrived in Washington. All license applications would go unanswered.

The former president is then supported by Jeff Sessions. Donald Trump’s attorney general from 2017 to 2018 is pulling out all the stops to prevent any changes to the system put in place by the DA. It must be said that the’attorney general is a staunch opponent of cannabis, having even tightened federal legislation. With Joe Biden in the White House since November 2020, President somewhat in favor of decriminalization, the lock finally gave way.