On Wednesday, December 9, 2020, the US House passed H.R.3797 – Medical Marijuana Research Act. It will now move to the Senate for consideration.
The House passed on a voice vote with strong bipartisan support. This comes after less than a week from voting on the MORE Act. That bill passed the House with mainly partisan support.
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Representatives Harris, Blumenauer, Lofgren, Griffith, Dingell, and Bishop introduced the bill in 2019. MMRA would allow states that have already passed cannabis laws to move forward with research. The bill does this by changing the Controlled Substance Act to allow research of marijuana.
Previously the only federal authorized research grow was the University of Mississippi. Other states had been conducting their own research within their own state programs. But the current law did not deem those programs acceptable medical cannabis research. The cannabis used at UM for research was of low quality and processed very differently.
UM states to the public on their website the following:
“Marijuana produced at UM is manicured to a uniform particle size because it is required to be standardized in various research protocols.”
Rep Eshoo noted on the House floor that this bill would rectify an issue of only having UM perform this task. Noting that their cannabis lacks to properties and potency of real-world marijuana. That leads to deficient research.
“Under this bill, scientists will no longer be forced to wait more than a year to become federally-approved to conduct cannabis research,” stated Eshoo
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The DEA could have done this
Despite being able to, the DEA has never licensed other research facilities to do so. In 2016, the agency said it would authorize other growers to help facilitate research. The DEA has received 37 applications total. The the agency said in August 2019 that it would consider moving forward with processing those applications. As of now, no other growers have been greenlighted. The lack of action has prompted lawsuits from two applicants.
Now the bill is off to the Senate. The Senate isn’t likely to bring the bill to a vote in the final days of this Congressional session.