That's what most marijuana consumers picture when they think “marijuana” — chunks of pungent green plant material coated in sticky, crystallized THC-rich resin. To investigate the real-world effects of marijuana, however, researchers need a product that looks and feels like the real thing. All federal marijuana is grown at a single facility at the University of Mississippi, overseen by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). But NIDA's weed doesn't pass muster if you want to know how marijuana use is affecting people in the real world. In an email, a NIDA representative acknowledged that “there has been some emerging interest from the research community for a wider variety of marijuana and marijuana products.

Source: Washington Post March 13, 2017 18:11 UTC