Colorado Awards $8M for Marijuana Research

Colorado was poised Wednesday to award more than $8 million for medical marijuana research, a step toward addressing complaints that little is known about pot’s medical potential.

The grants to be awarded by the state Board of Health would go to studies on whether marijuana helps treat epilepsy, brain tumors, Parkinson’s disease and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Though the awards are relatively small, they represent a new frontier for marijuana research. That’s because the Colorado grants are outside of the usual federal channels for approving marijuana research, a process that some say stymies pot research.

Federal approval to study marijuana’s medical potential requires permission of the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. And there’s only one legal source of the weed, the Marijuana Research Project at the University of Mississippi.

Twenty-three states and Washington, D.C., allow marijuana use by people with various medical conditions. But under federal law, marijuana is considered a drug with no medical use and doctors cannot prescribe it.

Dr. Larry Wolk, Colorado’s Chief Medical Officer, says the lack of research on marijuana’s medical value leaves sick people guessing about how pot may help them, and what doses to take.

“There’s nowhere else in medicine where we give a patient some seeds and say, ‘Go grow this and process it and then figure out how much you need,”‘ Wolk said.

“We need research dollars so we can answer more questions about medical efficacy” of marijuana, he said.

Among the projects poised for approval:

• Two separate studies on using marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder ($3.1 million);
• Whether adolescents and young adults with irritable bowel syndrome benefit from marijuana ($1.2 million);
• Using marijuana to relieve pain in children with brain tumors ($1 million);
• How an oil derived from marijuana plants affects pediatric epilepsy patients ($524,000);
• Comparing marijuana and oxycodone for pain relief ($472,000)

The money is coming from Colorado’s medical marijuana patient fees, not Colorado’s new taxes on recreational pot.

Last year, lawmakers authorized $10 million from reserves for “objective scientific research regarding the efficacy of marijuana and its component parts as part of medical treatment.”

Colorado received 57 applications for research grants. An advisory board whittled those to eight proposals totaling $7.6 million. The Board will be asked to authorize the spending of up to $8.4 million.

The money comes from fees paid by medical marijuana patients to get a “red card,” or authorization to possess up to 2 ounces of marijuana.

One of the researchers poised to study marijuana and PTSD called the Colorado awards groundbreaking because the state is providing money without federal red tape.

“The opportunity in Colorado is an amazing one,” said Marcel Bonn-Miller, a psychiatrist with the University of Pennsylvania who leads the Substance Abuse and Anxiety Program for the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department. (The VA is not participating directly in his marijuana studies.)

Colorado has about 117,000 medical marijuana patients who pay $15 a year to be on the registry. The number has grown slightly since Colorado voted two years ago to make marijuana legal for recreational purposes, not just medical purposes.