UNIVERSITY, Miss. (WANE/AP) – With the United States government seeking to reclassify marijuana to be less controlled, the way the drug is researched could change. Currently, marijuana is considered Scheduled I. This is the drug classification with the most restrictions. The change would take it to Schedule III, recognizing the potential medical benefits of marijuana.
“Since the early 70s, with the Controlled Substance Act, cannabis has been lumped in with drugs such as LSD, PCP, heroin, crystal methamphetamine. And so those drugs are, by and large, illicit. They’re totally illegal. And they have no, medicinal purpose,” said Robert Welch, the director of the National Center for Cannabis Research and Education at the University of Mississippi.
Cannabis and the cannabinoids within the cannabis plant do have medicinal use, according to Welch. He explains it’s been published in many studies.
“They’re saying that cannabis is more dangerous than fentanyl. So fentanyl is a Schedule II. And so that just doesn’t really make a lot of sense practically. And so this would have a number of positive implications for patients because research would be able to move forward, more easily and efficiently,” said Welch.
Welch does stress that just because the rules on marijuana will be more lenient, it doesn’t mean you will be able to go into a store and buy it over the counter. He explains it just means that it’s less stringent for people to be able to work with it and conduct more research.
“Institutions will not have to, obtain schedule one licensing. And so that’s much easier to most institutions probably already have a Schedule III level DEA license. And so that that alone would, would open up the research field tremendously. And so, a lot of pharmaceutical companies would be jumping into the fray if it’s Schedule III for that same reason, because they know it’s going to be a lot easier to conduct clinical trials on the sites that they have patients go to for these trials won’t have to be subject to the Schedule I parameters And so that makes it a lot easier to do research in all kinds of facets. And so that alone is going to be a huge advantage.”
This could speed up the process to get medicinal marijuana to patients, because the researchers wouldn’t have to go through a longer process, according to Welch.
“The other implication for businesses is, there’s an IRS Code 280. And so that doesn’t allow businesses to take deductions if they’re involved with Schedule I or cannabis at this point. So that would hopefully alleviate some state-allowed deductions. But state by state. So not all. So this would allow those businesses to have a tax advantage is one of the main positive things about the rescheduling as well in the state, in the state will add programs.”
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