Canada Spends Millions to Fund Cannabis Health Research

[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]C[/dropcap]anada legislators will soon be putting aside millions of dollars into funding research on how cannabis can impact human health.

According to Parksville Qualicom Beach News, the Canadian government is setting aside C$24.5 million ($18 million USD) to fund cannabis research conducted by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The funding will be used to look at both health problems associated with cannabis consumption and how cannabis can be used as medicine.

Specifically, C$4.5 million will go towards cannabis and its effect on public health, and C$2.9 million will address gaps in mental health. “We need the work of these researchers,” said Bill Blair, the federal minister of border security and organized crime reduction, according to Global News. “We need evidence-based information in policy so that those discussions can be informed not by myth and not by people who are just trying to make a buck off the most vulnerable people in our society, but by people who care about our kids and care about our communities.”

Blair claims that work conducted by researchers will help uncover new truths about cannabis and make it even safer so that new regulations can be put into effect by the end of this year. “We have now gazetted the new regulations for edibles, extracts and topicals,” Blair added. “A date of implementation will be established for those new regulations to come into effect. In any event, it has to take place under Canadian law by Oct. 17 of 2019.”

Since legalization in Canada, many have complained about the rise in prices now that things are federally regulated. One upside of this price spike is that the money raised from legal cannabis can do good things in the community. This could also create a model for other countries to follow once they fully legalize.