http://health.heraldtribune.com/2013/04/20/marijuana-research-funding-cut-as-support-grows/
Overall spending on research has dropped. This drop particularly impacts medical marijuana questions because the research into this aspect of cannabis is blocked by current attitudes in federal agencies.
...U.S. spending has dropped 31 percent since 2007 when it peaked at $131 million, according to a National Institutes of Health research database. Last year, 235 projects received $91 million of public funds, according to NIH data. Regarding cannabis specifically...fewer than 20 randomized controlled trials, the gold standard for clinical research, involving only about 300 patients have been conducted on smoked marijuana over the last 35 years, according to the American Medical Association, the U.S.'s largest doctor group.
Marijuana advocates point out inherent obstacles to conducting research: the National Institute on Drug Abuse controls all the cannabis used in approved trials, but the agency's mandate is to study abuse of drugs, not health benefits.
This creates dilemmas. The Food and Drug Administration, for instance, has approved a clinical trial studying whether marijuana can relieve symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. The trial, however, which is in the second of three stages of clinical testing, is blocked. NIDA, which controls the legal testing supply of the drug grown at a University of Mississippi farm, has refused to supply the researchers with marijuana.
Our govt. has put agencies in charge of cannabis who don't want to know anything positive about the plant. They limit access. They deny studies.
This is yet one more reason to remove cannabis from the purview of the DEA and let research go forward, particularly concerning anti-cancer properties.
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