MedPharm Research was notified by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that it had been selected to move forward as one of the first applicants to be granted a license to grow federally legal cannabis under the terms of a new policy statement issued today in the Federal Register.
In a letter to Gutierrez, the DEA stated that MedPharm will be issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, where the company will be asked to comment on regulations about growing cannabis for medical research. However, the DEA has not provided a timetable for when those regulations will be completed. “We at MedPharm stand ready to assist the DEA in any way we can to help expedite this process, and bring to patients the best quality, FDA-approved cannabis that they need for research and treatment as quickly as possible,” said Gutierrez.
According to the University of Mississippi News, in 1968, the Research Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Mississippi School of Pharmacy was awarded a competitive contract from the government to grow marijuana that could be standardized for research. For over 50 years, it has remained the only cultivation facility licensed by the DEA to provide federally legal cannabis for medical researchers, who have reported that cannabis from the university is of such poor quality that it is essentially useless in conducting the lab work and human trials necessary for a reliable FDA-approved medical research.
As more medical cannabis research ramped up, a growing group of medical cannabis researchers pressured the DEA to open up licensing to other facilities. Then, in August, 2016, the DEA stated that they would begin accepting applications for companies wanting licenses for legal grows, but nothing more happened until this June, when one of the applicants sued the DEA for unreasonable delays, prompting today’s response.
The application for the license included outlining research objectives and creating areas where medical research cannabis is grown specifically for research purposes.
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