Researchers Published More Than 4,000 Studies On Marijuana This Year As Trump Continues To Weigh Rescheduling

For the fifth year in a row, researchers worldwide published more than
4,000 scientific papers related to marijuana in 2025, according to a new
analysis by the advocacy group NORML.

All told, since the beginning of 2015, there have been more than 37,000
published papers about cannabis, the group said, largely reflecting
“researchers’ newfound focus on marijuana’s therapeutic activities as well
as investigations into the real-world effects of legalization laws.”

“Despite the perception that marijuana has yet to be subject to adequate
scientific scrutiny, scientists’ interest in studying cannabis has
increased exponentially in the past decade, as has our understanding of the
plant, its active constituents, their mechanisms of action, and their
effects on both the user and upon society,” NORML Deputy Director Paul
Armentano said in a press release.

“It is time for politicians and others to stop assessing cannabis through
the lens of ‘what we don’t know’ and instead start engaging in
evidence-based discussions about marijuana and marijuana reform policies
that are indicative of all that we do know,” he said.

To tally the papers, NORML conducted a keyword search of the National
Library of Medicine’s resource PubMed.gov. In total, the advocacy group said
on Wednesday, PubMed now cites “over 57,000 scientific papers on marijuana
dating back to the year 1840.”

Of those, more than 70 percent were published in the past decade, NORML
found. More than 90 percent, the group said, were published since 2002.

Published papers on cannabis are up compared to the trailing 10-year period
analyzed last year, during which 32,000 publications came out. But the
one-year record from 2022 appears to still be standing. More than 4,300
papers on cannabis were published that year.

Among the papers published in the past year are reports on declining youth
cannabis use in Canada post-legalization, lower rates of opioid prescribing
in medical marijuana states, the therapeutic potential of cannabis to treat
anxiety and depression, increased tourism benefits for jurisdictions that
have enacted legalization and more.


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Several other studies from 2025 have indicated that marijuana and its
components can effectively mitigate alcohol use disorders and curb
cravings. Researchers also found this year that more Americans use cannabis
than smoke cigarettes amid shifting perceptions of harm of the two
substances.

Also this year, scientists made strides in identifying new cannabinoids in
the marijuana plant such as cannabielsoxa.

There have been hopes among the scientific community that a proposal to
move cannabis from Schedule I to Schedule III of the Controlled Substances
(CSA) could ease research barriers enabling them to further explore the
risks and benefits of cannabis. But while President Donald Trump said in
August that a decision on that reform would come within weeks, it hasn’t
materialized yet.

The post Researchers Published More Than 4,000 Studies On Marijuana This
Year As Trump Continues To Weigh Rescheduling appeared first on Marijuana
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