I’ve searched high and low for something government does better than private entities. So far the only thing I’ve found that the government is competent at is causing death and destruction. In fact, the government can’t even get weed right:
All federal marijuana is grown at a single facility at the University of Mississippi, overseen by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Last summer the DEA formally took steps to allow other entities to supply marijuana for research purposes. So far, none have been approved.
The problems with the Mississippi weed go well beyond aesthetics.
For instance, the pot grown there maxes out, potency-wise, at about 13 percent THC (the main chemical that gets you high). And that might be an overstatement — Sisley’s own testing found that one of NIDA’s strains purported to be 13 percent THC was actually closer to 8 percent.
By comparison, the typical commercial weed available in Colorado is at about 19 percent THC, according to a laboratory that tests commercial marijuana in the state. And that’s just the average — some of the higher-end strains are pushing 30 percent THC or more.
For a researcher, it’s difficult to assess the real-world impact of high-end pot if you only have access to the low-quality stuff. It’s akin to investigating the effects of bourbon by giving people Bud Light.
This news has some pretty significant results. The federal government continues to claim that cannabis has no medicinal uses. It may be true that the shitty cannabis the government has approved for testing has no medical uses but the government approved cannabis doesn’t reflect the cannabis people actually use.
Why would anybody trust any federally sanctioned research into cannabis knowing that such research is hampered by artificially placed restrictions that guarantee that the results won’t reflect real world usage?