US (MD): John Hopkins University pulls out of MMJ study

Eighteen months after joining a study on using marijuana to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, Johns Hopkins University has pulled out without enrolling any veterans, the latest setback for the long-awaited research.

The university said its goals were no longer aligned with those of the administrator of the study, the Santa Cruz, Calif.-based Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). MAPS said the dispute was over federal drug policy and whether to openly challenge federal rules that say medical cannabis research must rely on marijuana grown by the federal National Institute on Drug Abuse.

One of the lead researchers from MAPS recently did just that, in a PBS report that said the government-grown marijuana provided for the study was of poor quality and contaminated with mold. Hopkins quit the study two days later.

Although MAPS will continue the research at a private lab in Arizona, the departure of the well-known university in Baltimore is a blow, analysts said, in part because the campus was considered a prime test site that could draw on Maryland’s large population of veterans.

Read more at The Washington Post