Federal cannabis research bill won’t impact the country’s budget

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The costs involved with expanding cannabis research won’t be a burden on the nation’s expenses

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has just released a study analyzing the costs involved in funding the newly House-passed bill to promote marijuana research. The CBO found that the costs involved in funding the marijuana research would have “virtually no impact on the federal deficit.”

The legislation, which passed the House with bipartisan support, would make cannabis research more efficient and more relevant to the cannabis industry of today by allowing research scientists access to the same products as those being sold to the public from state legal, and state taxed dispensaries.

The measure also contains mandates to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to proceed with their long-awaited approval of additional marijuana cultivators for research purposes. Currently, the only government-approved marijuana grown for research purposes is grown exclusively at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. However, scientists complain that this cannabis is of such poor quality that it is closer to commercial hemp than to the flower buds being sold in dispensaries and therefore unsuitable for research purposes.

The US Department of Health and Human Services is required, under the Medical Marijuana Research Act, to issue guidance on cannabis research and submit a report to Congress within five years after enactment to overview the results of federal cannabis studies and to “recommend whether they warrant the rescheduling of marijuana under federal law.”

While the two houses of Congress pass cannabis legislation back and forth like a tennis ball, the CBO went ahead and did the study on potential costs versus potential revenues and found that the legalization of recreational marijuana in the USA would create approximately $13.7 billion in net revenue for the US Treasury over the next ten years.