On Friday, December 2, 2022, the White House announced that President Biden signed House Resolution 8454, into law:
H.R. 8454, the “Medical Marijuana and Cannabidiol Research Expansion Act,” which establishes a new registration process for conducting research on marijuana and for manufacturing marijuana products for research purposes and drug development.According to Kyle Jaeger of Marijuana Moment, this is a significant and historic moment in cannabis reform:
President Joe Biden has officially signed a marijuana research bill into law, making history by enacting the first piece of standalone federal cannabis reform legislation in U.S. history.HR 8454 is not just historic because it’s the first standalone cannabis legislation in US history, it is also likely going to play a major role in ending federal prohibition. In October, Biden requested that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) evaluate marijuana’s Schedule I status. The CSA establishes a process for determining the scheduling of substances and relies on research to support any movement across the schedules or to remove a substance from the CSA all together. For years, the feds have used the same outdated studies showing that marijuana is dangerous and without medical benefit. This has created a Catch-22 as described by cannabis policy expert John Hudak in a 2016 interview with NPR:
There is this cannabis Catch-22 and it is, as a Schedule 1 drug, it is very difficult to do research on the plant. There are only certain researchers who will get the certification and licensure necessary to handle the drug. Then, of course, you need the funding to study it. You need approval from university institutional review boards, and the burdens that exist to do the type of research on a Schedule 1 drug are tremendous. But that research is what will inform the medical community as to its medical use, and so what you need and what you can do are entirely prevented by this federal government policy.HR 8485 could allow researchers to finally break this Catch-22 loop. More research will give HHS and DOJ more data, that will support the fact that marijuana’s Schedule I status is absolutely ridiculous. That could very well lead Biden’s administration to remove marijuana from Schedule I and hopefully from the CSA all together.