Biden signs infrastructure law, includes improvements to cannabis study

President Joe Biden signed an infrastructure bill on Monday that provides for the ability to allow researchers to use commercial cannabis in their studies in place of government-grown cannabis.

President Biden signed a comprehensive bill on November 15 that will go down in history as a major infrastructure overhaul. HR-3648, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Employment Act, is a $ 1.2 trillion bipartisan package aimed at supporting basic services.

“The bill I’m about to sign is proof that Democrats and Republicans can come together and deliver results despite the cynics,” Biden said. “We can do this. We can deliver real results for real people. We see in a way that is really important every day, to every person out there. And we’re taking a monumental step forward to better rebuild as a nation.” “The bill was passed in the Senate in August 2021, followed by the House of Representatives earlier this month.

The bill provides for numerous federal investments, including the repair of roads, bridges and runways and terminals at airports and the replacement of school buses with low-emission versions. It also donates funds to improve access to reliable, high-speed Internet services, upgrade power grids and provide drought protection.

More importantly, it also includes a provision that will allow researchers to study cannabis that consumers consume on a daily basis rather than the less potent cannabis that is grown by the government. Biden did not address this provision in his November 15 speech.

The bill mentions a “Report on Marijuana Research” in Sec. 25026. It states that in two years from now the Attorney General and the Secretary General for Health and Human Services will have to submit this public report, which will contain recommendations on the following points:

1. Improved access to cannabis “samples and strains” for researchers to study.
2. Establishment of a “national clearing house” to assist researchers in distributing these cannabis products.
3. Increase access to cannabis samples for researchers living in states that have not yet legalized medicinal or recreational cannabis.

Independently of this, cannabis was also mentioned in Section 24102 “Highway Safety Programs”. The section notes that states with legal cannabis have an obligation to educate drivers about the dangers of cannabis driving in the hope of reducing further injuries and / or deaths.

It’s not an uncommon fact that government-grown cannabis, currently only legally allowed to be produced by the University of Mississippi, has poor potency. According to a parallel comparison of commercial and state-grown cannabis by The Washington Post in 2017, commercial cannabis is thick, chunky, and covered in trichomes. A sample of government-grown cannabis was thin and appeared to be made from stems rather than cannabis flowers.

The inclusion of cannabis in this bill is brief but nonetheless important for improving research materials. Many policy responses to government legalization and access to medical cannabis have been that there isn’t enough research to prove cannabis’ effectiveness. The required Infrastructure Act cannabis report, due to be released in 2023 if everything goes according to plan, could pave the way for researchers to improve their study materials to get more effective results.

A number of other laws on cannabis are currently being proposed. The most recent of these is the States Reform Act, introduced on November 15 by South Carolina Senator Nancy Mace.

Mace’s bill would remove cannabis from List I substances and give states the power to introduce cannabis reform. “My home state of South Carolina allows CBD, Florida allows medical marijuana, California and others, for example, have full recreational use. Every state is different. All of this must be taken into account by the cannabis reform at the federal level. And it is time that federal law codified that reality, ”Mace said in a statement.