Feds Spend Over Half a Million in Research Money on Pharma Cure for Nonexistent "Marijuana Addiction"
One of the dangers of the quasi-normalization of marijuana use is that the combination of drug treatment programs, big Pharma, and cultural myths of "addiction" means that more resources and attention are going to go to nonsense like this, over half a million bucks of National Institute on Drug Abuse cash because:
There is a clear medical need for new candidate medications for the management of cannabis dependence and addiction. Our proposed research addresses this need with a program for the synthesis and development of novel FAAH inhibitors that increases levels of anandamide, an endogenous ligand for CB1 receptors, in the brain. Based on preliminary data showing that our novel FAAH inhibitors have some CB1 agonist-like properties, we expect to develop compounds that will be agonist-based candidate medications with excellent 'druggability', i.e., oral availability, delayed onset, and sufficiently long duration of action.
I question whether there is a "clear medical need," but there is certainly a clear institutional need on the part of the drug treatment industry, Big Pharma, and an American government on all levels that is going to be more and more troubled by the realities of human beings enjoying smoking a plant that hovers between commodity, medicine, and menace.