A legislative committee heard from the director of the University of Kentucky Cannabis Center, which was created under a measure enacted by the General Assembly, earlier this year.
While bills legalizing medical cannabis, or marijuana, have passed the Kentucky House in the past few years, they have never been acted upon in the Senate. So, lawmakers approved House Bill 604, which allocated $2 million over a two-year period to create the Cannabis Center at UK and have them report back to the legislature with their findings in 2024.
Dr. Shanna Bablonis, Director of the Center, gave the Interim Joint Health, Welfare and Family Services Committee on Wednesday an update of where things now stand, including some federal funding.
“We received a $2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health for an in-patient trial to examine vaporized cannabis for opioid use disorder,” she said. “We are also planning a cancer trial with the Markey Cancer Center to look at edible cannabis doses for patients with cancer.”
Bablonis told the panel, “This is going to be one of the first studies of its kind. You would think that cancer and cannabis have been really well researched. Unfortunately, that’s not the case, so this will represent one of the first placebo-controlled randomized trials for cancer patients, looking at cannabis in an edible form. So, we’re happy to be engaging in this effort.”
The Center is also working with the Kentucky Injury Prevention and Research Center in examining cannabis involvement in opioid overdose death, injuries, and driving fatalities, with the first data sets being issued in Spring 2023, as well as completing enrollment for a cannabis driving simulator study, in which they will compare various doses of inhaled cannabis to alcohol effects. Results are expected by early next year.
Sen. Ralph Alvarado, R-Winchester and a physician, said he was happy to see the scope of their research projects. “It’s always been my argument that there’s a lack of research on a lot of these topics, and the fact that you stated there is a lack of that is important.”
He also applauded their cannabis driving study using a simulator. “I think there’s been a lot of discussion about this, that people can be impaired, and clearly they can be, depending on the kind of THC that you’re inhaling or ingesting. If we could get some kind of baseline on where that impairment occurs, that can not only have impact for the state, it could have an impact nationally. Right now, we don’t have any methods of testing for that.”
Read the legislation forming the Center at https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/recorddocuments/bill/22RS/hb604/bill.pdf.
By: Tom Latek, Kentucky Today
