Earlier this week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reclassifying marijuana as a less dangerous drug.
The order moves cannabis from a Schedule I drug, a category that includes heroin and LSD, to a Schedule III drug, a category including ketamine, Tylenol with codeine and steroids.
The executive order does not, however, legalize marijuana under federal law. Cannabis is currently legal in 40 states for medical use and in 24 states for recreational use.
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Some pharmaceutical experts and addiction specialists told ABC News that the reclassification could remove stigma of the drug and open the doors to more scientific research.
On Monday, prior to the executive order signing, Trump said he was considering reclassifying marijuana, saying that it would lead to “tremendous amounts of research.”
Making marijuana research easier
Schedule I currently means that a drug has no currently accepted medical use under federal law and high potential for abuse and dependence. Meanwhile, Schedule III says a drug has acceptable medical uses and moderate-to-low potential for abuse and dependence. It also requires a doctor’s prescription.
Chad Johnson, an assistant professor in pharmaceutical sciences and the director of graduate studies in medical cannabis at the University of Maryland, explained that many researchers in academia stay away from conducting studies involving Schedule I substances because there are major barriers.
This includes getting approved for a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) license, which can take a long time and cost a significant amount of money, according to Johnson. DEA has to screen and vet candidates to make sure several security measures are in place just for researchers to get the substance in their laboratories, he added.
STOCK IMAGE/Getty Images – PHOTO: A hand holds a smoking joint in this undated file photo.
DEA also regulates how much of a Schedule I substance can be produced each year in the U.S. for medical, scientific or industrial purposes, so it limits the amount available to researchers, Johnson said.
“There’s a lot of people tend to stay away from those S1 substances for that reason, because it’s just too big of a hassle, not to mention you have to track every milligram or every bit that you’re using with a fine-tooth comb and report that to the DEA,” Johnson said.
Moving marijuana from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule III drug “removes those barrier. … and I think that will be a huge factor in bringing in a lot of new talent and a lot of old talent that maybe just wanted to stay away from it when it was still Schedule I,” he continued.
Addiction specialist cautious about rescheduling
Yasmin Hurd, director of the Addiction Institute at Mount Sinai in New York, said she had a mixed response to the executive order.
Although she said supports research into marijuana being made easier as a result of the rescheduling, she is worried about the potential increase in addiction risk.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 30% of people who use cannabis develop cannabis use disorder, which can lead to interference in daily activities.
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“For me, my negative about the rescheduling is mainly about the fact that it can be taken by some as a green light that cannabis [is] indeed medicine, which this does not say,” Hurd told ABC News. “I think that it’s really important because cannabis has not been shown to have any accepted medical use.”
Hurd said there are some prescribed medications that use cannabidiol. CBD, the non-psychoactive compound in marijuana, to treat epilepsy. Synthetic tetrahydrocannabidiol (THC), the main psychoactive compound, can also be prescribed to treat nausea and vomiting in some patients.
No cannabis products have been proven to have medicinal values, she said, and research is still ongoing.
A review published earlier this month in the medical journal JAMA found “insufficient” evidence of benefits when using cannabis or CBD for medical or therapeutic purposes.
STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images – PHOTO: This stock photo shows teens passing a marijuana joint at a party.
While the current state of research is lacking, in part due to marijuana’s previous Schedule I classification, there is a fair amount of patient experience data documenting their use of marijuana both medically and recreationally, Johnson said.
“Patient data is very important. [It] tells about the patient experience, why the patient’s using a particular product, what product they’re using in what frequency, and what they’re using it for,” he said.
Johnson disagreed that there aren’t medicinal benefits, saying the patient data shows just the opposite.
“It isn’t necessarily elucidating the mechanism of action or how it’s actually working, but it at least tells us something about the effect and the benefi. … we’re lacking in research, but we do have some small studies that show that cannabis does have medicinal benefits,” he said.
Trump’s executive order may help break the stigma associated with cannabis use and allow researchers to collect meaningful data on the drug, Johnson added.
