Drexel’s New Medical Marijuana Study Is Not The Plot of a Stoner Movie

We’re a little bit late to this story, but honestly it reminded us so much of a 1990s stoner movie that we had to share the details. Drexel University, it turns out, has been given a $3.3 million grant to study the effects of medical marijuana on adults ages 18-28.

The study, “Medical Marijuana, Emerging Adults & Community: Connecting Health and Policy,” is being led by Dr. Stephen Lankenau, an associate professor in Drexel’s School of Public Health, who was awarded an R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health for $3.3 million over five years, beginning July 1. Ultimately, Lankenau hopes the study’s findings can guide medical marijuana policies at local, state and national levels to result in the most positive health outcomes for young adults and communities.

“Dispensaries are a relatively new and unusual institution, and they haven’t been studied much,” Lankenau said. One study hypothesis is that dispensaries, which often provide social support in addition to medical marijuana, may provide the basis for better physical and psychological outcomes for medical marijuana users, compared to non-medical users who purchase the drug on the black market.

We can see it now: Higher Medicine, starring Jim Breuer as the bad-boy medical genius who gets a grant to keep the party going for five years! Only he meets a straightlaced hospital administrator played by Christina Applegate, who teaches him responsibility, love, and helps him keep the grant in a climactic contest that shows he’s learning real stuff that will benefit mankind. Which, to be fair, the real study will probably do.