The project is led by Bonnie Halpern-Felsher, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University and Mariaelena Gonzalez, assistant professor in public health at UC Merced. According to NCPC Director and UC Merced Associate Professor Anna Song, the researchers intend to provide data to counties that will allow them to make informed decisions about policy. Song notes that the counties in the study area are very different from, say, the Bay Area or Southern California, so state-level data isn’t adequate for formulation of local tobacco and cannabis policy. Song reports that the center’s work will fill gaps in knowledge about cannabis intake behavior; epidemio logical data is spotty, she says, because many people won’t admit to engaging in behavior that has historically been illegal and continues to be federally illegal. The researchers are also keen to understand the interconnections between tobacco and cannabis — emerging data indicates that perceptions of tobacco risk are related to perceptions of cannabis, and the relationship between the two may affect individuals’ future tobacco use. “These are the things we are trying to disentangle,” Song says. The center was founded with a $3.8 million grant from the Tobacco Related Disease Research Program, a state initiative administered by the UC Office of the President,rolling grow tables which dispenses funds derived from the Tobacco Tax Increase Initiative, a proposition approved by California voters in 2016.Cannabis institutes at three UC campuses in Southern California — UC San Diego, UC Irvine and UC Los Angeles — conduct research on the health effects and medical uses of cannabis and its derivatives. But they differ greatly in their approach. The UC Irvine program brings together medicine and law. The UCLA program has set itself the ambitious interdisciplinary task of exploring how cannabis affects society along the medical, legal, economic and social dimensions.
The UC Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego, the oldest of the three institutes, was established when California Senate Bill 847 enabled UC to establish a program to “enhance understanding of the efficacy and adverse effects of marijuana as a pharma cological agent.” Today, the center’s cannabis research covers a broad range of clinical conditions such as neuropathic pain, autism, bipolar disorder and early psychosis — as well as public safety issues surrounding the use of cannabis and cannabinoids. A notable current CMCR study, authorized by the 2015 Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, seeks to better understand the effect on driving of THC. CMCR Director Igor Grant describes the study as “one of the first in the United States that looks in great detail into different dosages of THC and their ef fect on driving.” Each research day begins with study participants — already experienced with cannabis — entering driving simulators to undergo driving as sessments. Participants then consume THC in specified doses and continue over the course of the day to undergo driving assessments. Meanwhile, their bodily fluids are drawn over the course of several hours. The study seeks to determine how multiple dosing strengths of cannabis affect driving and for what duration driving impairment continues after cannabis use. The research also seeks to determine if saliva or breath tests can substitute for blood samples in determining cannabis intoxication and if sobriety tests administered with iPads can supplement standard field sobriety tests. The study is led by Thomas Marcotte, a professor of psychiatry at the UCSD School of Medicine. Another notable CMCR study, tentatively set to begin at the end of the summer, concerns autism. The research, which includes both a clinical trial and a basic science component, investigates the effect of CBD on severe autism spectrum disorder, a condition that affects one in every 68 U.S. children.
In the clinical trial — overseen by Doris Trauner, a professor of neurosciences and pediatrics at UCSD — researchers will ad minister oral doses of CBD or a placebo to 30 children who have been diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. CBD interacts with the endocannabinoid system, a network in the human body that regulates various physiological and cognitive processes. Researchers will attempt to determine whether CBD is safe for the study population to use, whether it addresses their symptoms, whether it alters neurotransmitters or improves brain connectivity, and if so, how. In the basic science component of the study, re searchers will use cells from the skin and blood of participants and, in Grant’s words, “re-engineer these cells to be neurons — to create little brain organoids, if you will.” This feat of re-engineering will allow researchers to observe how the cells function and, if CBD has benefited the subjects of the clinical trial, to investigate the associated mechanism of action. The study will be conducted with funding from the Wholistic Research and Education Foundation. Grant notes that Proposition 64 allocates $2 million annually to the CMCR. The center intends to use the funding partly to support its core facility and partly to fund small-scale pilot studies that might be conducted at the center itself, at other UC campuses or at campuses of other universities in California.Amuch newer entrant into medical cannabis re search is UC Irvine’s Center for the Study of Cannabis . As an interdisciplinary venture involving UC Irvine’s School of Medicine and School of Law, the center includes basic medical science, clinical science and jurisprudence in its purview. Daniele Piomelli, di rector of the center — as well as a professor of anatomy and neurobiology at the UC Irvine School of Medicine — calls cannabis “a quintessential multidisciplinary problem.” Because much existing cannabis law was written when medical knowledge about cannabis was scarce, he says, new knowledge to underpin new legislation is urgently needed. Piomelli further argues that because cannabis en compasses, for example, commercial and agricultural dimensions, researchers across disciplines must engage with each other to find realistic solutions to cannabis-related problems. “If medicine and science and law don’t talk to one another,” he says, “we’ll never have sensible legislation.”
In that spirit, the center has two directors — Piomelli representing the medical side of the interdisciplinary undertaking and Robert Solomon, a clinical professor of law at UC Irvine School of Law, representing the legal side. About 30 faculty members across law and medicine are involved in the center’s work. The centerpiece of the CSC’s work so far is an ongoing preclinical study called Impact of Cannabinoids Across the Lifespan. Piomelli, who directs the study while a team of UC Irvine principal investigators conducts the bulk of the research, characterizes it as a broad research project with many components, from which a stream of independent discoveries and publications is expected over the next 3 or 4 years. Piomelli reports that the study’s main purpose is to study THC’s effect on adolescents — and particularly on the adolescent brain. The human brain routinely produces neurotransmitters known as endocannabinoids — molecules, similar to cannabis derivatives, that are important in learning, memory and experiencing emotion. The key questions that the study addresses are these: Does exposure to THC, in a persistent way, change the brain’s endocannabinoid system? If so, what changes at the cellular and molecular level explain the alterations? Does exposure to THC during adolescence carry lasting implications for learning and emotion? The study has received a $9 million Center of Excellence Grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.Another new entrant into cannabis research is the UCLA Cannabis Research Initiative, founded in 2017 with a broad remit — “to understand how cannabis affects bodies, brains and society.” The initiative, encompassing an interdisciplinary team of 40 faculty members from 15 university departments, aims to function as an education, research and service organization that leads public discussions of cannabis, policy and health. The initiative got its start in the months before Proposition 64 was approved by voters. According to Jeffrey Chen, the initiative’s director, leadership at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior anticipated that legalization would soon create the world’s largest market for recreational cannabis — and that California and particularly Los Angeles would “play an outsize role in establishing normative behaviors” around cannabis. Los Angeles, in Chen’s view,growing rack has become the world’s cannabis capital overnight. He and his colleagues hypothesize that, given the city’s status as a major tourist destination and an exporter of culture, “what happens in Los Angeles is very likely to be transmitted around the world.” So far, Chen says, the initiative’s research remains mainly oriented toward health-related issues. One study — soon to start, and led by Kate Wolitzky-Taylor, an assistant clinical professor in UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and Bio-behavioral Sciences — seeks to develop and evaluate a behavioral treatment for young adults who exhibit cannabis use disorder and who use cannabis to cope with anxiety, depression and the like.
Cannabis, according to the researchers, is the most commonly used drug among young adults, and it can be harmful when its use qualifies as a “maladaptive way” of contending with negative experiences. Wolitzky-Taylor reports that the research project is a randomized clinical trial focusing on participants’ reactions to the anxiety and depression that might lead them to use cannabis. The treatment, she says, will draw on strategies such as “mindfulness, cognitive reappraisal skills, problem solving and … gradual exposure to distressing but objectively safe stimuli.” The treatment was developed in an iterative manner — an early version has already been tested with a small group of patients and further refinements may be made after the clinical trial is complete. The research is funded by a 3-year, $450,000 grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Individuals with cannabis use disorder, if they are 18 to 25 years old, are encouraged to email the project’s coordinator, Nick Pistolesi , regarding participation in the study. A second example of the initiative’s work is de cidedly nonmedical. Brett Hollenbeck, an assistant professor of marketing at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, analyzed — along with Kosuke Uetake of Yale University — a large dataset of cannabis transactions in the state of Washington to learn about firm and consumer behavior in legal cannabis markets . Their goal was to provide policymakers, including in California, information useful for optimal development of cannabis taxation and regulation — optimal in the sense of maximizing tax revenues, safeguarding public health and discouraging a black market for cannabis. Washington created a legal framework for growing and selling cannabis in 2012. Legal sales began there in 2014. Since then, every cannabis transaction in the state has been recorded in an administrative dataset. The re searchers used the data to model consumer demand for cannabis products and measure price elasticity. Their analysis, covering the period from November 2014 to September 2017, indicates that Washington’s strict cap on cannabis retailers — some 550 are allowed in the entire state — has permitted retailers to command high prices and behave like local monopolies. The researchers report that when prices for regulated cannabis rise in Washington, consumers often switch to cheaper cannabis alternatives available from regulated retailers, rather than seeking out black market cannabis. Indeed, the researchers argue that Washington’s 37% sales tax rate for cannabis, though it appears high, does not drive down tax revenue, and in fact the state could generate higher revenue by raising the tax rate to 40% or higher. Further, the researchers calculate that Washington could substantially increase its revenue if it acted as the state’s sole cannabis retailer, as it did for alcohol sales until 2012, and could do so without causing an increase in cannabis prices.UC Riverside, though it has established no dedicated cannabis program, will soon host cannabis research for the first time. Nicholas DiPatrizio — a UC Riverside assistant professor in the School of Medicine’s Division of Biomedical Sciences who is newly equipped with a DEA Schedule I license — is set to begin re search investigating the effects of long-term cannabis use on metabolic diseases, including type 2 diabetes. DiPatrizio’s lab, using technologies such as tandem mass spectrometry, will study how cannabis use affects glucose homeostasis in wild-type mice — and will also investigate whether long-term cannabis use is sometimes associated with positive health outcomes such as increases in high density lipoproteins . DiPatrizio’s research has received more than $700,000 in funding from the Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program, the same entity that provides funding for the UC Nicotine and Cannabis Policy Center at UC Merced.