This is a scientific Americans 60 second science.

I'm Steve Mursky.

Got a minute?

Medical marijuana is now available in 28 states,

but a big obstacle to research on marijuana as medicine is that it's listed

by the federal government on what's called Schedule 1.

Assignment to Schedule 1 means that the Food and Drug Administration does not recognize a legitimate medical purpose to a substance.

At a session on medical marijuana at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science on February 19th, I asked researcher

Ryan Vandry of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine about getting marijuana off

of the list of Schedule 1 substances?

Well, it can't come off of Schedule 1 to a different schedule

until the traditional drug development work has been done.

And I don't think the traditional drug development work really can be done

while it's Schedule 1.

It just makes large phase three trials in hospital-based programs near impossible.

It's a catch-22.

So I think the only way to really get around that is kind of two paths.

One, you just unscheduled it completely.

Alcohol is not scheduled, for example example and so that's the pathway

that some of the states have gone just making it available or treating as it as a

like a botanical herbal product. The other way would be to kind of wait until we

get more targeted specific products. So not whole plant cannabis but maybe more

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