WIKIMEDIA, BOGDANMore and more Americans are using cannabis both for medicinal and recreational purposes, but scientists still know little about the drug’s effects on human physiology, according to a National Academies report released this month (January 12). Part of this knowledge gap owes to the fact that cannabis is classified as a Schedule I drug under the US Controlled Substances Act. In the eyes of the federal government, marijuana is a dangerous substance—on par with heroin—that “has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” But researchers in Canada are not far ahead of their US counterparts, even though cannabis has since 2001 been functionally legal for medicinal use at the federal level there.
“I wish I could say that [legalizing medical marijuana] had led to more research” in Canada, said Mark Ware, a McGill University pain management physician who has researched the safety and efficacy of cannabinoids for the past 18 years. “I think there’s certainly a willingness to be able to document real world use of cannabis under a legal framework.” Ware, who served as a reviewer on the National Academies report, added that while there are several public registries that track the legal use of cannabis among Canadians, experimental evidence on the effects of that use are lacking. “The clinical trials, I think for most people that’s an expensive undertaking,” he said. “There are still questions around who owns the intellectual property, who’s going to sponsor ...
