Federal Agency Says It Halted Marijuana Cultivation...

Officials at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) say the federal
agency’s recent decision to halt its longstanding orders of research
marijuana supplied by the University of Mississippi is the result of a
cost-cutting directive from the Trump administration’s Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE).

But the move, NIDA said, isn’t expected to interrupt the availability of
cannabis for government-approved research.

A recent executive order—titled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department
of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative”—led to the Department
of Health and Human Services conducting “a comprehensive review of all
existing contracts to identify opportunities for cost reduction,” NIDA
representatives said in an email to Marijuana Moment.

“As a result of this initiative, no new task orders for cannabis
cultivation have been issued,” the email explains. “That said, the NIDA
Drug Supply Program maintains an existing inventory of cannabis and
cannabis-derived products, which remain available for approved research.”

NIDA’s email also clarified that while the agency has not issued new orders
for research cannabis, its “contract with the University of Mississippi to
grow cannabis for research remains in place,” active until 2028.

The agency does not contract with other growers, it confirmed in a
follow-up email.

“The NIDA-supported marijuana cultivation contract is only with the
University of Mississippi,” it said.

While the University of Mississippi for decades 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.

Nevertheless, NIDA exclusively contracted Ole Miss to provide marijuana for
its Drug Supply Program, which allows researchers working on federally
approved studies to obtain cannabis for free.

In the wake of NIDA’s recent halt of its orders, news of which was first
reported by Cannabis Wire, some other DEA-approved cultivators are warning
that future marijuana research could be at risk.

Maine-based Maridose said in a press release Wednesday, for example, that
NIDA’s cancellation “has created uncertainty regarding the future of
cannabis research.”

“While existing inventory produced under this program is currently
sufficient to support immediate research needs through the end of 2025,
there is no assurance that additional product will be available once those
supplies are exhausted,” the company said. “This disruption could
jeopardize ongoing clinical and preclinical studies, and impede progress on
critical cannabis research across the country.”

Researchers conducting federally approved studies can obtain cannabis
through any of the DEA-approved cultivators, though materials cost more
than going through the free Drug Supply Program.

Growers like Maridose say they’re prepared to fill any unmet demand.

“Our team is committed to working with researchers to ensure uninterrupted
access to high-quality materials for both current and future studies,”
founder Richard Shain said in the company’s release. “While the loss of the
University of Mississippi program may present short-term challenges,
Maridose stands ready to help fill that gap.”

Others, however, said there was little risk that NIDA’s move would impact
research. A lack of funding and regulatory hurdles as the result of
cannabis’s Schedule I status—not a scarcity of research marijuana—are
what’s holding back clinical studies, they said.

Sue Sisley, a researcher at the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), which
is itself DEA-licensed cannabis cultivator, said NIDA severing its order
with Ole Miss “doesn’t affect Scottsdale Research Institute at all.”

“We grow our own high-quality (comparable to real world) marijuana,” she
told Marijuana Moment in an email. “We use it for our own FDA [Food and
Drug Administration] studies and we grow to supply other studies. So U Miss
closing down new cannabis orders is irrelevant.”

As for barriers to research, Sisley emphasized that there is “barely any
new marijuana research happening,” calling the amount of funding available
“minuscule compared to other areas.”

“And therefore the demand for new research cannabis is minimal,” she
explained.

In fact, Sisley cheered the end of the Ole Miss order.

“This is a brilliant move by the Trump admin,” she wrote. “I applaud this
administration for having the courage to finally acknowledge that there was
no need to have only one federally legal supplier that was receiving
millions in government money annually.”

“The bottom line is that we are growing our own cannabis and it’s ten times
better than anything that’s grown at the University of Mississippi,” the
researcher added, noting that SRI “just supplied 400 bottles of low-THC
cannabis tincture…for a phase 1 trial examining cannabis oil treating
autism.”

Sisley and others in past years have complained about the quality cannabis
grown by the University of Mississippi and supplied through NIDA, claiming
that some provided samples wouldn’t even pass basic testing standards in
state-legal cannabis markets. Nevertheless, a study late last year by
researchers at Ole Miss asserted that cannabis produced at the school was
“very similar” to products found on state-legal markets.

“The pause between NIDA and Ole Miss highlights what many in the research
community have known for years,” Justin Abril, co-founder of DEA-licensed
cultivator Royal Emerald Pharmaceuticals, said in an email to Marijuana
Moment. “There’s been limited demand for NIDA supplied cannabis due to
well-documented concerns about quality, consistency, and lack of
suitability for pharmaceutical development.”

“The fact that NIDA reports having excess material on hand speaks for
itself,” Abril added. “Now that there are multiple DEA-licensed
manufacturers online and news of the intended rescheduling, researchers
finally have access to pharmaceutical grade material appropriate for
investigational studies.”

Sisley at SRI said it’s time to give other growers—who haven’t had
government subsidies—an opportunity to fill the demand for research
marijuana.

“Let’s give these other 10 DEA licensed growers a chance to start growing
research grade cannabis and taking over where university of Mississippi is
now suddenly unfunded,” she said, noting that at SRI, “we’ve never had an
opportunity to enjoy government money flowing month after month.”

Even leadership at Maridose, which warned that NIDA’s move could threaten
future research, think the University of Mississippi order cancellation
could eventually improve the supply of cannabis used for clinical studies.

“The cancellation should have a positive effect on the quality of research
because the cannabis obtained from other DEA manufacturers will be more
analogous to what is sold to the public,” founder Richard Shain said in an
email. “DOGE’s cancellation of the DSP contract makes perfect business
sense,” he added, noting that “demand was decreasing and other
non-government sources are available.”

Shain also said he doubted the NIDA development signaled skepticism by the
Trump administration toward marijuana research generally.

“No manufacturing licenses were canceled and the government grant
establishing the Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids (R3CR) was
not affected,” he said, referring to another federally funded marijuana
facility housed at Ole Miss. “This seems to indicate the administration
support for cannabis research.”

Mahmoud ElSohly—who has long helmed the University of Mississippi cannabis
cultivation and research division, contracted as part of NIDA’s drug supply
program—declined to offer additional reaction last week on the order
cancellation. In past comments to Marijuana Moment, he’s challenged the
claims that the school’s cannabis is of low quality.

An Ole Miss spokesperson, meanwhile, confirmed to Marijuana Moment that
“NIDA has chosen not to award the current year task order to the University
of Mississippi for cannabis production.”

“The university has two years remaining on its federal contract,” added
Jacob Batte, the school’s director of news and media relations, “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.”

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 National Institute of Standards and Technology.*

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