Pot grant ‘important step forward,’ Blair says
Research grant of $1.4M shared by 14 projects that will help ‘inform policy’
Pot czar Liberal MP Bill Blair appeared at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on Wednesday morning to announce the winners of a $1.4-million cannabis research grant — money that scientists say is necessary, but also too little and too late.
Blair unveiled 14 projects that would each receive $100,000 over one year. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) “catalyst” grants, a funding opportunity first announced last spring, range in focus from efforts to monitor cannabis-impaired driving to understanding the impacts of pot use in youth.
“There is an absence of evidence” that should be informing policy, Blair said. Canada’s cannabis researchers have been working “with one hand tied behind their back, because they have not had a regulated environment in which to do their research. They have been trying to get this work done in a prohibitive environment, and they have not had the investment from government in the type of scientific research that is necessary. The catalyst grants announced today I think are an important step forward.”
Marijuana researchers said they appreciated the grants, but questioned both the amount and the timing: the government plans to legalize pot this summer.
“The money was announced today. There’s no realistic way to begin gathering data before legalization happens,” said M-J Milloy, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use and an investigator on one of the 14 winning projects. Without a proper baseline, Milloy and others said, it will be difficult to gauge the success or failure of any policy changes.
“What do you compare any data that you gather after legalization to?”
Milloy and others said the funding was welcome but insufficient: $100,000 over a year is a fraction of the typical CIHR grant. But they also said that underfunding of CIHR generally is part of the problem.
“From the social side to the biochemistry and pharmacology, there are just such tremendous knowledge gaps,” said Cory Harris, a professor at the University of Ottawa who studies the chemistry, bioactivity and ethnobotany of cannabis.
“Fundamentally, we need to understand the plant better.”