HJAR Nov/Dec 2021

36 NOV / DEC 2021 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF ARKANSAS POLICY COLUMN POLICY SINCE 1996, when California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana, the legalization of marijuana for medical or rec- reational purposes has spread to most of the United States, including Arkansas. Un- der the voter-approved Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2016, an Arkan- sas resident age 18 or older who has one or more of 18 qualifying medical conditions, as verified by a physician, may obtain a card authorizing purchases of medical marijuana. At this writing, more than 79,000Arkansas medical marijuana ID cards are active, and more than 60,000 pounds of medical mari- juana have been purchased at state-licensed dispensaries. Despite its widespread therapeutic use, however, cannabis has not been the subject gaps”related tomedical cannabis and called for more research on the short-term and long-term effects, both positive and nega- tive, of cannabis use. 1 Researchers with the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement and the Univer- sity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences have an opportunity to help fill some of those gaps. Earlier this fall, the National Insti- tute on Drug Abuse, a division of the Na- tional Institutes of Health, awarded ACHI and UAMS a $1.3 million grant to study medical marijuana utilization in Arkansas. Teresa J. Hudson, PhD, PharmD — director of the Division of Health Services Research at UAMS and associate director of the VA Health Services Research and Development Center for Mental Healthcare and Outcomes of extensive scientific research into its ef- fects on users. The Food and DrugAdminis- tration has not approved cannabis products for medical use, so the products have not undergone that agency’s rigorous review process. Marijuana continues to be classi- fied as a Schedule 1 substance under federal law, which imposes numerous barriers to the funding and resources needed for research. Researchers have gathered some scien- tific evidence on the use of cannabis for the alleviation of symptoms such as pain and anxiety, but few studies have considered how the amount, strain, potency andmethod of use affect a person’s health outcomes. In 2017, the Health and Medicine Division of the National Academies of Sciences, Engi- neering, and Medicine identified “research STUDYING MEDICAL MARIJUANA: ResearchProject byACHI, UAMS toBe First of ItsKind

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