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A growing interest in cannabis has led to new career opportunities. By Chris Woolston
Here's an oddjob in science: on a regular basis, Natasha Mason, a psychopharmacology postdoctoral researcher at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, offers cannabis to her study participants. They get the drug for free - but there's a catch. They have to puff their vapourizers while lying in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine. In most of the world, marijuana remains illegal for both recreational and medical purposes, but in this laboratory, which also studies the acute impacts of psychedelic mushrooms and LSD, cannabis is a basic material for science.
Roughly 4% of the world's population has used cannabis in the past year, so studying the effects of the drug matters on a global scale. As regulations continue to relax - the United Kingdom legalized medical cannabis in 2018, and, in April, New Jersey became the 18th US state to legalize it for recreational use - the opportunities for research into the drug are bound to expand.
Unanswered questions about cannabis could occupy scientists for many years to come, says Chad Johnson, a medicinal chemist and co-director of the two-year master's programme in medical cannabis science and therapeutics at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy in Rockville - the only programme of its kind in the country. The topics range from its biochemistry and potential therapeutic applications to its public-health impacts and surrounding policy issues. "We're seeing a boom of interest in the field," he says. "It's catching fire."
Many opportunities
Junior researchers who are interested in cannabis careers have many paths to consider, including academia, industrial cultivation and government policy and regulation, Johnson says. Whichever path they choose, they'll have to navigate a field that is complicated by legal issues, social stigma and increasing job competition. Still, for researchers with the right training and aptitude, there's serious potential in pot.
Javier Varela, a researcher and chief operating officer at Fotmer Life Sciences in Canelones, Uruguay, has made a career out of cannabis cultivation for scientific and medicinal purposes. In 2013, Uruguay became the first country in the world to fully legalize recreational cannabis, giving it a head start in a market that now spans much of the world: legal...