Federal Agency Cancels Marijuana Production Deal With University Of Mississippi, Ending Partnership That Lasted Half A Century

A university that for decades held a monopoly as the only institution
federally authorized to grow marijuana for study purposes has confirmed
that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has ended a partnership
through which the school provided cannabis for research.

“NIDA has chosen not to award the current year task order to the University
of Mississippi for cannabis production,” Jacob Batte, the director of news
and media relations at Ole Miss, told Marijuana Moment in a statement
Friday.

“The university has two years remaining on its federal contract,” Batte
added, “and stands ready to leverage its more than 57 years of cannabis
research experience to advance the field of cannabis science and meet any
future needs NIDA may have.”

Mahmoud ElSohly—who has long helmed the university’s cannabis cultivation
and research division, contracted as part of NIDA’s drug supply
program—declined to offer additional comment.

The cancellation was first noted by Cannabis Wire, which reported that
although the government contract with Ole Miss for “production of cannabis
and related materials for research” is active until 2028, NIDA told the
school it won’t be placing another order.

While the University of Mississippi long held a monopoly on the production
of research cannabis, there are now seven Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA)-approved “bulk manufacturer marihuana growers.” DEA in recent years
has slowly expanded the pool of institutions eligible to produce and
provide marijuana for research purposes amid calls by politicians and
public health experts to more intensively study the drug.

An Ole Miss study late last year reported that cannabis produced at the
school was “very similar” to that found on state-legal markets. Some
researchers, however, were skeptical, pointing to past complaints about
poor quality and low THC potency.

NIDA’s cancellation of the Ole Miss order comes on the heels of the Trump
administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ending a
contract in May with the University of Mississippi through which the school
monitored cannabinoid content such as THC and CBD in cannabis confiscated
by law enforcement.

ElSohly, who also heads that program, said at the time that it was still
possible his lab’s work could limp along until the federal funding resumes.
But if samples stop flowing to his Mississippi lab, a decades-long history
of THC levels in the illicit U.S. cannabis supply will soon come to an end,
he said.

The earlier contract cancellation came about two months after DOGE
separately promoted the end of a separate grant meant to fund a study
examining cannabis use risks among LGBTQ+ individuals, non-binary people
and heterosexual women.

Despite the cuts to some programs, it’s hardly the end for the University
of Mississippi’s (UM) involvement in marijuana research.

“The UM School of Pharmacy will continue to play a leading role in the
state and around the country in cannabis discovery, innovation and research
through the National Center for Natural Products Research, the National
Center for Cannabis Research and Education, and the Resource Center for
Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research,” Batte said in the statement to
Marijuana Moment.

The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Resource Center for Cannabis and
Cannabinoid Research (R3CR), hosted at Ole Miss, launched earlier this year.

For that project, the university partnered with Washington State University
(WSU) and the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP), with support from a grant
awarded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health
(NCCIH) under NIH. Ole Miss is leading the effort’s regulatory guidance
core, while WSU will handle research support and USP will focus on research
standards.

Ole Miss’s National Center for Natural Products Research is housing the NIH
resource center to “provide cannabis research information through an
interactive website, webinars, seed funding and conferences” to empower
researchers to “generate more science-backed evidence,” it said in a press
release at the time.

Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration has ramped up recruitment—recently
urging people to join them on the frontlines of the “war on drugs,” even if
they currently work as a “coffee barista” or otherwise have a non-law
enforcement background.

It was also recently revealed that “marijuana” is one of nearly two dozen
“controversial or high-profile topics” that staff and researchers at the
National Cancer Institute (NCI) are required to clear with higher-ups
before writing about, according to a leaked memo from within the federal
agency.

Separately, researchers involved in a federally funded clinical trial
around marijuana wrote in a recent article in the American Journal of
Medicine that further study into the substance is of “critical importance”
given the millions of patients and consumers in legal states, but they
warned that government restrictions “stifle scientific exploration of its
potential and risks.”

Classifying cannabis as a Schedule I substance, said authors from the
University of Maryland (UMD) schools of medicine and nursing, “traps
researchers in a paradox: proving medical value requires studies, yet
studies are heavily restricted.”

“As legalization outpaces science,” they added, “reform is imperative to
close the evidence gap and meet society’s demands.”

*Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.*

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Of Mississippi, Ending Partnership That Lasted Half A Century appeared
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