Should there be more marijuana genome projects?
It would have been inconceivable only a few years ago, but the United States is embracing marijuana in a big way.
Legal pot is the new gay marriage: Polls are showing that public approval of legalization is hovering around 50%, mirroring the rapid rise in approval for legal same-sex unions. The New York Times just published a long piece reporting pot’s relatively benign effects in California, where it has been medically legal for 17 years and is easily available to the healthy as well.
As California goes, historically speaking, so goes the nation. Eventually. Marijuana is legal for medical uses in 20 states, legal for any use in 2, and the subject of active lobbying in the others. The federal government still declares marijuana illegal, but also says it will permit states to regulate it themselves. With the threat of federal prosecution gone, more states are likely to legalize.
Ignorance about marijuana’s genetic properties
Despite this rapid revisionism, we remain remarkably ignorant about pot’s properties, including its genetic properties. There are anecdotes galore about the medical effects of marijuana, but not much actual data. Politics has made research on real medical applications—for example pain, Alzheimer’s disease, cancer—next to impossible, as neuroscientist David Nutt and his colleagues complained in a Nature journal last June.
http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/10/29/should-there-be-more-marijuana-genome-projects/#.UnP0_ZG9VS9
= new reply since forum marked as read