Utah pot study hits federal roadblocks

SALT LAKE CITY — A $500,000 state-funded study, designed to gauge marijuana’s impact on pain, has been delayed so many times due to federal regulations that some worry it won’t be ready before Utah voters decide in November whether to pass a medical marijuana ballot initiative.

Ivy Estabrooke, executive director of the Utah Science Technology and Research initiative, told the Deseret News that it took nearly a year and a half for researchers to jump through the legal hoops necessary to begin the study this summer.

Even if the study’s findings are too late to influence voters, it can still help the state going forward, Estabrooke said.

If Utah voters approve medical marijuana, the findings “will provide insight into efficacy, and that will help individuals and doctors decide whether to use it,” she said.

The study aims to examine how cannabis affects people who suffer from chronic pain. Subjects will receive chocolate pudding laced with different combinations of THC, marijuana’s key psychoactive compound, and CBD, its nonpsychoactive ingredient, as well as a placebo.

“We’ll have a better informed idea of whether it’s truly helping with pain,” Estabrooke said.

Marijuana is legal in some form in more than 30 states and the District of Columbia, but it remains illegal at the federal level.

Despite increasing acceptance, there is little rigorous research on the benefits and harms of marijuana.