One of the things holding back so many American people from supporting marijuana legalization is the lack of proper research and knowledge. For years people have been drip fed a poor image of the plant – and only in the last decades have we started to see cannabis for what it truly is: a medicinal herb.
There are so many people that are starting now to change their minds, now that any research at all has been done. As marijuana becomes medicinally and recreationally in more and more states in the U.S. each year, the benefits cannot be denied any longer.
Research Funds are in All the Wrong Places
You might be surprised to find out that $1.4 billion were spent between 2008 and last year 2014. Out of that 1.4 billion only a mere 27% went to researching the medicinal benefits of marijuana.
The other 73% of those funds were spent on researching abuse and addiction – and with all those dollars spent they were still not able to prove that cannabis is addictive in any way!
If they would even split the difference 50/50 we would already know so much more about the benefits of cannabis we have yet to discover.
It Doesn’t End There…
On top of spending well over half of the research funds on addiction and abuse rather than medicinal benefits, the government has also been funding medicinal research on much more harmful drugs such as opiates, ketamine, Xanax and amphetamine.
Would you believe they spent $200 million more researching pot addiction and abuse than they spent on the addiction and abuse of crystal meth?
None of it makes any sense – researching the “medicinal” benefits of harmful and addictive drugs, when there is an herb that has been used medicinally for centuries labeled as having no medical value and having addictive properties.
They also make it increasingly difficult for researchers who want to look into health benefits for marijuana. Not only do they have to get approval from the DEA, FDA and NIDA, but even then they can only use marijuana supplied by the government (grown at University of Mississippi).
The entire process has taken years for each and every individual or team who wants to use federal grants to research the medicinal benefits of marijuana.
Will it ever end?
While the government can still control marijuana as they please, grants and funding will always be hard to come by for such a restricted “drug”. However, if they were to change the drug schedule for marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 2 drug funding and materials alike would become more readily available.
Considering how much forward momentum the marijuana movement has seen in the last few years, it is entirely possible that we could finally see that change. Then the proper research can finally be done and the truth about cannabis and it’s multitude of health benefits will not be doubted.
