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Brooke Staggs, Orange County Register, May 31, 2019

Nearly three years after California voters approved a cannabis legalization bill that promised, among other things, to clarify the issue of driving while high, researchers and law enforcement have few concrete answers about a potentially deadly problem.

It’s unclear, for example, if marijuana-related arrests or car crashes have increased statewide. It’s up to each county to track that data, and many still don’t distinguish between cannabis and other drugs in their arrest and accident reports.

There also aren’t yet any reliable methods for testing whether drivers were actually impaired by marijuana when they’re behind the wheel. Research in this area is hampered by federal law and left scrambling to catch up with the wave of marijuana legalization that continues to sweep the country.

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Felice J. Freyer, Boston Globe, April 30, 2019

An investor in the cannabis industry has donated $9 million to Harvard and MIT to study the drug’s health effects, in what the institutions describe as the largest private gift to support marijuana research in the United States.

The Broderick Fund for Phytocannabinoid Research, announced Tuesday morning, will be shared equally by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the goal of filling vast gaps in the understanding of how marijuana affects the brain and behavior.

“The lack of basic science research enables people to make claims in a vacuum that are either anecdotal or based on old science,” said the donor, Charles R. “Bob” Broderick, an alumnus of both universities. “For generations we haven’t been able to study this thing for various sorts of societal reasons. That should end now, as well as the prohibitions that are falling around the world.”

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Brooke Staggs, Orange County Register, May 8, 2019

Nearly three years after the Drug Enforcement Agency announced it would end a monopoly on who can grow cannabis for legally sanctioned research, there’s still only one federally authorized cannabis cultivator in the United States.

And the limited supply of research cannabis is hampering the speed, quality and range of studies that scientists can conduct on the potential medical benefits, or harms, of marijuana — even as demand for reliable cannabis research soars.

“It is politics and not science that is interrupting the conduct of this research,” said John Hudak, a fellow at the nonprofit Brookings Institution who specializes in marijuana policy. “And that is not something that Americans should stand for.”

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Marty Munson, Men's Health, April 3, 2019

CVS and Walgreens announced they’re going to sell products containing CBD, best known as the component of marijuana that won’t make you high, in certain stores. CVS is currently selling CBD topicals—creams, sprays, and lotions—in eight states. Walgreens announced its intention to sell CBD products days later, but “isn’t sharing additional details at this time,” according to a spokesperson.

If CBD hadn’t already reached fever pitch, with products like CBD-containing gummies, beer, coffee, eye creams, and even (no kidding) suppositories flooding the market, this announcement legitimizes the compound further.

But market share and the veneer of legitimacy doesn’t mean there’s a lot of clarity around the stuff. Here’s what to know about CBD before you buy:

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