United States: DEA announces measures to facilitate cannabis research

In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced on Monday that it would take measures to facilitate and expand scientific research on cannabis. The laws governing cannabis production will be relaxed to allow a greater number of growers to apply for approval.

As evidence of the need for these measures, the Democratic senator from Illinois recently introduced a bill aimed at sRemove all federal restrictions to conduct research on cannabis. In addition, over the past two years, the DEA has more than doubled the quota for issuing cannabis production licenses. The DEA hopes that registering a larger number of qualified cannabis producers will improve the quality and variety of products available.

Necessary Measures

The decision comes just two days before a key deadline in a lawsuit filed against the agency by researcher Sue Sisley of the Scottsdale Research Institute. Dr. Sisley is studying the potential of cannabis to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, with a particular focus on veterans. She had sought to end a three-year block by the DEA on her own cannabis research. «Until today, no one could do anything. We were tied up,» said Shane Pennington, a member of Dr. Sisley’s legal team. «Now they’re going to do something. This is a huge step forward.».

For nearly half a century, the University of Mississippi was the only institution authorized to grow cannabis for scientific purposes. The research is outsourced to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which produces only a handful of cannabis strains, and their cultivation methods produce inferior-quality flowers. This monopoly on production for research purposes meant that NIDA and the Mississippi growers had no incentive to provide what Dr. Sisley and her colleagues needed for their studies. The DEA’s new measures mean that Dr. Sisley will be able to obtain higher-quality products with a greater variety in the chemical composition of the cannabis flowers.

Regulations that have not yet been announced

Although the DEA’s announcement represents a significant step forward, the regulations have not yet been drafted, and this could take a long time, further delaying the project’s implementation. «Now we just have to keep the DEA’s attention,» said Dr. Sisley. «The DEA could slow this process down for many years, leaving progress in medical cannabis research in legal limbo indefinitely. But at least that door is now theoretically open.».

The main challenge lawmakers will face is the reclassification of cannabis. Until now, the DEA has insisted that cannabis remain a Schedule I controlled substance—considered the most dangerous category—even though half of the country’s states have legalized it for medical or recreational use. According to Shane Pennington, the reluctance to reclassify cannabis makes no sense, given the extensive research that has already been conducted in the United States and around the world on the effectiveness of cannabis.

The DEA’s press release does not specify a date for the publication of the new measures, stating only that «the DEA intends to propose new regulations governing the cannabis producer program for scientific and medical research.» The future of cannabis research therefore remains uncertain.