The California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) granted $19,942,918 to 16 academic institutions with plans to research cannabis on April 26. The grants will be dedicated to research initiatives exploring the effectiveness of cannabis on “mental health of young people, novel cannabinoids like Delta-8 and Delta-10 THC, and a first-of-its kind study of California’s legacy cannabis genetics, intended to preserve the history, value, and diversity of the communities that steward them,” a press release stated.

According to DCC chief deputy director Rasha Salama, the goal is to have these particular initiatives lead the way in cannabis studies. “It is the Department’s aspiration that these studies will advance the body of scientific research, further our understanding of cannabis, and aid to the continued development and refinement of the legal framework,” said Salama. “These studies will provide valuable insights on topics of interest to California’s consumers, businesses, and policy makers and the Department looks forward to sharing them once they are completed.”

Grants were awarded to institutions in six categories, including cannabis potency, medicinal use of cannabis, health of the cannabis industry, monopolies and unfair competition, California legacy genetics and genetic sequencing, and “other” topics. A total of 98 proposals were considered, and 16 were chosen from that pool based on “strong scientific methodology, their ability to provide useful information for policymaking, their advancement of public understanding of cannabis, and their potential to generate foundational research that will support exponential future knowledge.”

The institution that received the highest grant amount of funds was Cal Poly Humboldt with $2,699,178, which will be sued to tackle the topic of “Legacy Cannabis Genetics: People and Their Plants, a Community-Driven Study.” 

According to a press release, a nonprofit organization called Origins Council and the Cannabis Equity Policy Council is partnering with the Cal Poly Humboldt to work on the initiative. “This research seeks to empower and protect California’s legacy cultivation communities who have overcome great adversity to innovate and steward one of the most important collections of cannabis genetic resources in the world,” stated Origins Council executive director Genine Coleman.

Additionally, the University of California, Irvine and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) received $2 million each, and both will be conducting cannabis potency studies.

UCLA-based studies secured six grants, and University of California, Berkeley (UCB) received grants for three. Other institutions included University of California, San Francisco, University of California, Davis, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, and Cal Poly Humboldt.

One particular collaboration between UC Irvine and UCLA will conduct the “first double-blind, placebo-controlled, federally compliant, drug-administration study evaluating the intoxicating effects of inhaled cannabis plant compared to inhaled concentrates. It is expected [to] establish a clinically significant threshold to define high and low THC concentrations.”

In February, the DCC also announced a new grant program offering $20 million to help support and expand the state’s cannabis industry. “Expanding access to California’s retail cannabis market is an important step towards protecting consumer safety and supporting a balanced market,” said DCC director Nicole Elliott. “The retail access grant program ultimately seeks to encourage legal retail operations in areas where existing consumers do not have convenient access to regulated cannabis.” The grant application window ends on April 28, and $10 million of the grant funds will be awarded by June 20. After that, an additional $10 million will be “available to previous awardees as they issue licenses.”

The DCC released a statement in early March regarding the enforcement statistics from the past two years. According to the agency’s report, the DCC led 61 search warrant operations in 2021, but conducted 155 in 2022. In 2021, the DCC seized more than 41,726 pounds of cannabis (approximately $77,772,936 in value), but that number increased to 144,254 pounds in 2022 (estimated to be more than $243,017,836 in value).

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The University of California, Davis announced this week that it is launching a new institute that aims to “advance basic knowledge about the mechanisms of psychedelics and translate it into safe and effective treatments for diseases such as depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, addiction, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, among others.”

Called “the Institute for Psychedelics and Neurotherapeutics,” it will “bring together scientists across a range of disciplines and partner with the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that key discoveries lead to new medicines for patients,” the university said in the announcement, adding that the institute “was specifically designed to facilitate collaborations across campus.”

The institute “will be funded in part by a contribution of approximately $5 million from the deans of the College of Letters and Science and the School of Medicine, the vice chancellor for Research, and the Office of the Provost,” the school said, noting that the funding distinguishes it from other centers involved in the same field of study.

“While other psychedelic science centers have been formed across the country with gifts from philanthropists, the UC Davis institute is notable for also being supported by substantial university funds,” the university said. 

The university said that another “unique feature of the UC Davis institute will be its focus on chemistry and the development of novel neurotherapeutics.”

David E. Olson, an associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at UC Davis, has been tapped to serve as the founding director of the new institute.

“Psychedelics have a lot of therapeutic potential, but we can do better,” said Olson, whose group published a paper three years ago “describing the first nonhallucinogenic analogue of a psychedelic compound capable of promoting neuroplasticity and producing antidepressant and anti-addictive effects in preclinical models,” according to the university.

In Olson’s view, the university said, “novel molecules tailored to specific disease indications could offer substantial benefits and open doors to partnerships with industry by solving many issues currently faced by traditional psychedelics related to safety, scalability and intellectual property.”

“Psychedelics have a unique ability to produce long-lasting changes in the brain that are relevant to treating numerous conditions,” said Olson. “If we can harness those beneficial properties while engineering molecules that are safer and more scalable, we can help a lot of people.”

John A. Gray, an associate professor in the Department of Neurology, will serve as associate director. Olson and Gray authored a study in 2018 “demonstrating that psychedelics promote neuroplasticity — the growth of new neurons and formation of neural connections,” the university said in the announcement this week.

“Neuronal atrophy is a key factor underlying many diseases, and the ability of psychedelics to promote the growth of neurons and new connections in the brain could have broad therapeutic implications,” Gray said.

The university stated that the institute “will leverage the extraordinary breadth of expertise in the neuroscience community at UC Davis, which includes nearly 300 faculty members in centers, institutes and departments across the Davis and Sacramento campuses,” and that researchers “will be able to work on every aspect of psychedelic science, from molecules and cells through to human clinical trials.”

“Combining the considerable expertise of UC Davis’ pioneering basic research teams, world-class neuroscientists and our nationally recognized medical center is a formula for success that we trust will result in groundbreaking discoveries that will help patients regionally and worldwide,” Susan Murin, dean of the School of Medicine, said in the announcement this week.

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