Marijuana could soon be downgraded from a Schedule 1 drug

NPR interviewed R. Lorraine Collins in report on the implications for cannabis research amid news that the federal government may soon change how marijuana is regulated. “I, as a researcher, cannot go to a store and buy cannabis and use it in my research,” Collins said. Instead, she has to get some grown and processed by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of NIH. This is inconvenient. It also means that the marijuana that people in many places can just walk into a store and buy isn't being studied. “On a retail level, you can get cannabis products that have pretty high levels of THC. When you get cannabis products from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the THC content is much lower.”