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It took psychiatrist Staci Gruber four years to wrangle approval to run a clinical trial testing whether a liquid cannabinol product administered orally can ease symptoms of anxiety. She had to get the okay from the US Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
Cannabis research, she tells The Scientist, is “not for the faint of heart.”
Eleven states and Washington, DC, have legalized recreational and medical marijuana use, with Illinois being the latest to join in January 2020, and 19 have legalized medical marijuana. It is a popular drug—a survey of nearly 170,000 adults published today (September 20) in JAMA reports that around 8 percent of respondents use marijuana, and nearly 4 percent do so daily. Yet despite its ubiquity in American society, researchers say their hands remain tied by a decades-old federal law classifying cannabis and ...
