After a decade of working on the first FDA-approved trial examining the effects of THC and CBD on the symptoms of PTSD in war veterans, a team of researchers has declared their clinical trial complete. The process, however, was not simple.
“We are proud to have persevered through these regulatory hurdles independently of hospitals, universities, or the VA system,” commented site principal investigator Dr. Sue Sisley in a press release.
The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) received approval from the U.S. Public Health Service to start the study back in 2014. Research began in January 2017 at Phoenix, Arizona’s Scottsdale Research Institute, and was slated to also take place at Johns Hopkins University, until the school dropped out of the experiment in March 2017.
The trial tested marijuana with varying cannabinoid makeups, experimenting with high-THC, high-CBD and equal THC-CBD (1:1) ratio cannabis. Subjects were able to use up to two grams per day during periods of self-dosing, which rotated with phases in which they were required to consume randomly assigned quantities of cannabis.
Brad Burge, a MAPS spokesperson, tells High Times about some of the challenges they had to overcome, which involved serious struggles recruiting vets needed for a robust study cohort.
“Because none of Arizona’s public university hospitals nor the VA were willing to assist with recruiting veterans for the study, enrollment was slower than expected,” says Burge. “So much that last fall, it looked as if we were going to have to end the study prematurely.”
Fortunately, a number of Arizona veteran groups stepped in to find the rest of the 76 subjects needed to make a scientifically viable study.
In terms of medical cannabis, when asked if the panorama of veterans’ rights had