It’s the problem faced by every single marijuana dispensary in the nine states that already sell marijuana for recreational purposes.
The fact is, “legal weed” isn’t entirely legal. And if New Jersey legalizes marijuana, it will come with unique challenges — and solutions — for those looking to find success in cannabis.
The U.S. Department of Justice still considers marijuana a “Schedule 1” drug, a classification that indicates it has no medicinal value, despite 29 states having some kind of medical marijuana program.
“When you’re in a federally illegal business, things like banking and accounting that other companies would take for granted and just do in their sleep become an exercise in challenge and creativity and compliance,” said Paul Seaborn, who teaches the business of marijuana at the University of Denver.
The federal government has spent much of the last five years taking a hands-off approach to states with legal weed, but the Trump Administration has flip-flopped on the issue: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded the Cole Memo in January, opening up the possibility of prosecuting states with legal weed.
But in April, U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner, R-Colorado, said President Donald Trump had decided it was a “states’ rights” issue. And last week, President Donald Trump indicated that he’d support the bipartisan STATES Act, which would end the federal prohibition of marijuana and leave its regulation up to the states.
Here are a few of the unique ways the federal prohibition of cannabis is affecting those intimately involved with the drug in Colorado, the first state in the country to legalize marijuana for recreational purposes.
Get in the van
To a passerby, it looks like a plain, white Dodge Sprinter van decorated with a few decals from the University of Colorado Boulder.
But inside? It’s the CannaVan — a mobile laboratory replete with a litany medical equipment, computers and even tape on the floor, where test subjects can perform jumping jacks and push-ups.
Nearly every day, the CannaVan is on the road, collecting data from human test subjects for one of the many tests undertaken by the Center for Health and Addiction: Neuroscience, Genes, and Environment, or CHANGE Lab for short.
It’s the CHANGE Lab’s solution to one major problem: Because the university gets federal funding, its employees can’t touch the drug or bring it on campus — not even to view it under a microscope.
Credit: www.420magazine.com
CannaVan research is largely a three-step process:
- Researchers park the CannaVan outside a subject’s home. The person comes to the van and performs a series of tests so researchers can get baseline statistics.
- The subject returns home and consumes marijuana — whatever strain they’d like, in whatever form they’d prefer.
- After a certain period of time, they return to the CannaVan and perform the tests again, allowing researchers to observe specific physical and mental effects of the drug.
The drug never enters University of Colorado property, and its employees never even see it.
“The real benefit of what we’re doing here is to study the products that are available on the legal market that you or I could walk out to the corner and buy any day of the week because we’re over 21,” CHANGE Lab co-director Angela Bryan said. “So many people are using these products without knowing what the potential harmful consequences are or what is the best thing to use for what they’re after.”
With the CannaVan, researchers are starting to break new ground on cannabis research. Recently, they started making headway into the idea that CBD partially negates the psychoactive effects of THC.
Essentially, a medical marijuana user may be able to consume a strain with both THC and CBD and feel some beneficial effects without feeling high.
“They have fewer recall errors and less effects on their cognition, which suggests that — if we have CBD in the product — that some of the negative consequences of THC might be lessened,” Bryan said.
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