In their reply to a letter written by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes for Health (NIH) wrote that researchers should be allowed to access cannabis from licensed dispensaries in states where cannabis is legal instead of being compelled to rely on the single source licensed by the federal government.
In that same letter, the federal agencies discussed how the prohibition of cannabis at the federal level was limiting cannabis research. These limitations include the quality and diversity of research-grade cannabis.
Studies have revealed that the cannabis grown at the only federally licensed facility at the University of Mississippi is closer to industrial hemp than to the cannabis which is readily available in states which have legalized the substance.
The federal agencies say that this discrepancy creates gaps in the way the government and the scientific community understand cannabis products.
The letter from NIH and the FDA comes in response to a letter that was written by Schatz in March asking the agencies about the research agenda they had, their take on what the federal prohibition of cannabis was having on easing cannabis research, and what they thought should be done to make the validity and quality of cannabis research better.
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