Liberal government grant for pot research should've come earlier, researchers say

Marijuana researchers say they don't have time to collect data before legalization begins in a few months.

Thestar.com
Jan. 24, 2018
By Kate Allen

Pot czar Liberal MP Bill Blair appeared at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health on Wednesday morning to announce the winners of a $1.4 million cannabis research grant - money that scientists say is necessary, but also too little and too late.

Blair unveiled 14 projects that would each receive $100,000 over one year. The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) "catalyst" grants, a funding opportunity first announced last spring, range in focus from efforts to monitor marijuana-impaired driving to understanding the impacts of marijuana use in youth.

"There is an absence of evidence" that should be informing policy, said Blair. Canada's cannabis researchers have been working "with one hand tied behind their back, because they have not had a regulated environment in which to do their research. They have been trying to get this work done in a prohibitive environment, and they have not had the investment from government in the type of scientific research that is necessary. The catalyst grants announced today I think are an important step forward."

As parliamentary secretary to the ministers of justice and health, Blair is leading the government's effort to reform Canada's pot laws. He was Toronto's chief of police during a period when marijuana-related arrests rose steadily.

Marijuana researchers said they appreciated the grants, but questioned both the amount and the timing: the government plans to legalize pot this summer.

"The money was announced today. There's no realistic way to begin gathering data before legalization happens," said M-J Milloy, a research scientist at the B.C. Centre on Substance Use and an investigator on one of the 14 winning projects. Without a proper baseline, Milloy and others said, it will be difficult to gauge the success or failure of any policy changes.

"What do you compare any data that you gather after legalization to?"

Milloy and others said the funding was welcome but insufficient: $100,000 over a year is a fraction of the typical CIHR grant, which in 2017 was an average of $720,534 over 4.38 years. But they also said that underfunding of CIHR generally is part of the problem. The success rate for those larger "open" grants was just 15 per cent last year.