Beau Kilmer:
Yes, so, in general, you can do research on Schedule I drugs, but it turns out there are a lot of hoops that you need to jump through.
And so, in general, if you move from Schedule I to Schedule III, it should reduce some of those restrictions, reduce some of those administrative barriers. However, the Congressional Research Service came out last year and said, look, there was a law that was passed in — or a bill signed into law in 2022, which was specific to doing research on cannabis.
And so their takeaway on this is that moving cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III isn’t going to make much of a difference. That said, some may argue that, by moving it from Schedule I to Schedule III, there could be less stigma. So some researchers may be more likely to get involved.
But even, if on the margins, this reduces administrative barriers and if more people get involved or want to get involved in research, the bottom line is, who’s going to pay for it? The National Institutes of Health, they fund a lot of the research on cannabis. And so a big question remains is, will there be money there to support this research?
