When Dr. Jacci Bainbridge, a professor of pharmacy and a researcher at the University of Colorado Anschutz, goes to work on a clinical trial, it looks like something out of a spy thriller.
First, she meets up with a nurse who unlocks the door to the special room where the substance being tested is stored — Bainbridge doesn’t have a key. Surveillance cameras watch their every move.
Then they walk together to a special cabinet where each uses a different key, one black and one silver, to unlock the door.
“We literally have to both put our keys in there and turn them to open the cabinet,” she said. “The whole thing is that no one person can have access to it.”
The end result of this “Mission: Impossible” scenario is that Bainbridge now has in her hands something that any adult in Colorado can walk into any one of hundreds of stores to obtain: a small amount of cannabis.
Bainbridge’s research looks at the potential medical benefits of cannabis use. She is working on one study now on restless legs syndrome and another on back pain. But because marijuana has been classified federally as a Schedule I controlled substance — the most restrictive class — she has had to follow elaborate storage requirements and complete mountains of paperwork.
That could ease following Thursday’s announcement by President Donald Trump’s administration that state-licensed medical marijuana will move to the less-restrictive Schedule III.
Bainbridge said she’s hopeful that the decision will open up more funding and more interest in cannabis research, in part because the rules will be less onerous.
“Yes there would be paperwork, but there wouldn’t be four forms before you can dispense a product to a patient,” she said.
Cautious enthusiasm
Across Colorado, elected officials, researchers and cannabis industry leaders responded to Thursday’s announcement with cautious — but unmistakable — enthusiasm.
Many acknowledged the decades of work it took to reach this point.
“We are nearing the end zone,” attorney Shawn Hauser, a veteran of Colorado’s marijuana legalization initiatives, said in a statement. “Today’s order makes clear that the White House and the Attorney General are committed to completing this process.”
“It’s high-time the federal government is finally catching up to states like Colorado that have led on safe, regulated medical and adult-use cannabis,” Gov. Jared Polis said in his own statement.
But many also nodded to the work ahead to iron out the logistical kinks, as well as the uneven footing the announcement creates for Colorado’s cannabis industry.
Because the order reschedules cannabis and cannabis-infused products that are state-licensed for medical use but not those for recreational use, the move splits Colorado’s industry down the middle.
Medical marijuana businesses will face fewer restrictions and will, for the first time, be able to deduct business expenses on their federal taxes. A provision of federal tax law prohibits businesses that deal Schedule I substances from taking those normal deductions, so the switch to Schedule III will likely be a significant financial boost to medical marijuana businesses.
Denver attorney Brian Vicente, who helped lead the campaign to legalize cannabis in Colorado, estimated that marijuana business owners nationwide have spent an extra $2.2 billion in tax payments.
“Rescheduling will fundamentally change how state-legal cannabis license holders do business and the degree to which they can prosper,” he said in a statement.
Split down the middle
Meanwhile, recreational businesses — also referred to by state regulators as adult-use businesses or simply retail businesses — will continue to face tighter restrictions and won’t be able to take the tax deductions, at least for the time being.
Chuck Smith, the CEO of the cannabis industry group Colorado Leads, called Thursday’s announcement “a historic and notable step forward in aligning federal policy with science and the reality on the ground in states like Colorado.”
But he also cautioned that clarity on the impacts of rescheduling is critical.
“State-licensed medical marijuana businesses appear to have a path to operate within a new federal registration framework,” Smith said in a statement, “while adult-use marijuana remains outside the order and therefore remains subject to Schedule I treatment unless and until the broader federal rulemaking is completed.”
This could be particularly complicated for what are known as hybrid businesses — cannabis stores or cultivation facilities that have both a medical and a recreational side.
There are 278 stores licensed to sell medical marijuana in Colorado, and 671 stores licensed to sell for recreational use, according to state data. Using that data, The Colorado Sun found more than 200 stores licensed for both medical and recreational sales.
“Hybrid businesses should expect a transitional period in which federally covered medical activity and federally non-covered adult-use activity may be treated differently for registration, tax, and compliance purposes,” Smith said in his statement.
Much of this could be moot by summer, as Thursday’s order also sets up an expedited timeline for consideration of fully removing marijuana from Schedule I and placing it in Schedule III.
“We are encouraged to see the administration establish a clear timeline for the administrative hearing process to consider broader changes to marijuana scheduling,” Smith said. “This is a critical step to ensure that progress continues in a transparent and timely manner.”
Research riddles
Bainbridge, the CU researcher, said she doesn’t foresee much changing in how she conducts studies — other than the storage and paperwork requirements.
University researchers who study cannabis for years struggled to find marijuana products that they could use in studies. The federal government required those research products to come from an officially approved source. But, until more recently, that meant researchers received cannabis that was less potent than what was being sold in stores, making it difficult to compare study results to real-world experiences.
That has started to change with more sources for research-grade cannabis being approved, Bainbridge said. Because what is available in stores may not be consistent or contain what it says it contains, Bainbridge said she doesn’t think researchers will switch to buying their testing supply from a dispensary.
“I don’t think I can go to a dispensary and say I want this product and bring it onto campus,” she said.
But she is hopeful that rescheduling will open up more interest in studying cannabis, its compounds and its therapeutic potential.
“Now will there all of a sudden be more money that comes into research?” she asked. “That would be great. That would make me very enthusiastic.”