In a surprising move, US Sen. Orrin Hatch, a conservative Utah Republican and longtime cannabis prohibitionist, today introduced a bill to encourage more research into the effectiveness of medical cannabis.
Hatch didn’t just quietly introduce the bill, though. Rather, he took to the Senate floor and gave a passionate speech in defense of the use of medical marijuana, saying the plant “has the potential to help millions of Americans,” and “can truly change people’s lives for the better.”
“It’s high time to address research into medical marijuana,” he added. “Our country has experimented with a variety of state solutions without properly delving into the weeds on the effectiveness, safety, dosing, administration, and quality of medical marijuana. All the while, the federal government strains to enforce regulations that sometimes do more harm than good. To be blunt, we need to remove the administrative barriers preventing legitimate research into medical marijuana, which is why I’ve decided to roll out the MEDS Act.”
What the MEDS Bill Would Do
The Marijuana Effective Drug Study Act of 2017 (MEDS Act) debuts with four other co-sponsors, including Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI), Chris Coons (D-DE), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Thom Tillis (R-NC).
The MEDS bill would:
- Encourage more research on the potential medical uses of marijuana by streamlining the research registration process, without imposing a scheduling determination on the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
- Make marijuana more available for legitimate scientific and medical research and the commercial production of any FDA-approved drugs derived from marijuana.
- Retain important checks to protect against diversion or abuse of the controlled marijuana substances.
- Require the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to develop and publish recommendations for good manufacturing practices for growing and producing marijuana for research.
- Require the attorney general to increase the national marijuana quota in a timely manner to meet the changing medical, scientific, and industrial needs for marijuana.
- Codify the administration’s decision to terminate the Public Health Service and its review of proposals for medical research on marijuana.
- Prevent the Department of Health and Human Services from instituting any other marijuana-specific protocol reviews, other than the voluntary review that a researcher can request from National Institutes of Health (NIH) in order to access the expedited DEA registration process.
A Movement Moment
Nevertheless, he said, “we would be remiss if we threw out the baby with the bathwater.”
“It doesn’t take a sweeping overhaul of Obamacare” to substantially improve America’s healthcare, Hatch said, speaking of the medical potential of cannabis-based treatments. “Sometimes even small things can have big impacts on people’s lives.”
credit:420intel.com
