Who is Funding Harvard, UCLA, & MIT Cannabis Studies? Big Cannabis or Big Pharma?

The research for how safe and great weed is, some of the dollars are coming from the weed lobby. Are we getting that right?

That’s how this Fox interview – The Ingraham Angle– with the Executive Vice President of Smart Approaches to Marijuana Luke Niforatos begins.

According to Niforatos, there has been an avalanche of studies that have been published recently that link the high potency weed that’s currently in the market with increased cases of psychosis, addiction, schizophrenia, and “all kinds of car crashes.” 

Laura Anne Ingraham, the host of the show mentions a “highly cited” study that makes this claim.

“The consumption of marijuana is associated with an increase in violent behavior over the course of an individual’s lifespan, and a high risk of psychosis for frequent users.”

Norman Miller et al, March 2020

Big marijuana is now in panic mode and has approached “big brother” the tobacco industry which happens to be the largest investor in the cannabis industry, to sort this out, alleges Niforatos. 

How? You may ask. 

“By pumping out fake bogus research,” continues Niforatos in his decimating speech.

Ms. Ingraham mentions  “documents obtained by the LA Times” that apparently prove that cannabis studies conducted by UCLA have been funded by big players in the cannabis industry.

While UCLA claimed that its study was independent, they hid the fact that big cannabis was paying “some bills.”

 “Cannabis companies and investors provided at least some of the early financial support, writing checks for tens of thousands of dollars.”

By Adam Almahrek December 15th

Harvard, MIT, UC San Diego were also adversely mentioned in the YouTube clip as having accepted multi-million dollar gifts from cannabis players in recent years.

“We need to get real science out there, not some bogus science that is funded by industry,” Niforatos wraps up. 

Several commenters have lashed back at Ingraham and Niforatos for the claims made in the clip. We shall wait to see if they will respond. Meanwhile, here’s a cannabis study that was published last month in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that was apparently funded by GD Pharma. Who's fooling who?