Federal Agency Cancels Marijuana Production Deal With University Of Mississippi, Ending Partnership That Lasted Half A Century
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A university that for decades held a monopoly as the only institution federally authorized to grow marijuana for study purposes has confirmed that the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has ended a partnership through which the school provided cannabis for research.
“NIDA has chosen not to award the current year task order to the University of Mississippi for cannabis production,” Jacob Batte, the director of news and media relations at Ole Miss, told Marijuana Moment in a statement Friday.
“The university has two years remaining on its federal contract,” Batte added, “and stands ready to leverage its more than 57 years of cannabis research experience to advance the field of cannabis science and meet any future needs NIDA may have.”
Mahmoud ElSohly—who has long helmed the university’s cannabis cultivation and research division, contracted as part of NIDA’s drug supply program—declined to offer additional comment.
The cancellation was first noted by Cannabis Wire, which reported that although the government contract with Ole Miss for “production of cannabis and related materials for research” is active until 2028, NIDA told the school it won’t be placing another order.
While the University of Mississippi long held a monopoly on the production of research cannabis, there are now seven Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)-approved “bulk manufacturer marihuana growers.” DEA in recent years has slowly expanded the pool of institutions eligible to produce and provide marijuana for research purposes amid calls by politicians and public health experts to more intensively study the drug.
An Ole Miss study late last year reported that cannabis produced at the school was “very similar” to that found on state-legal markets. Some researchers, however, were skeptical, pointing to past complaints about poor quality and low THC potency.
NIDA’s cancellation of the Ole Miss order comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) ending a contract in May with the University of Mississippi through which the school monitored cannabinoid content such as THC and CBD in cannabis confiscated by law enforcement.
ElSohly, who also heads that program, said at the time that it was still possible his lab’s work could limp along until the federal funding resumes. But if samples stop flowing to his Mississippi lab, a decades-long history of THC levels in the illicit U.S. cannabis supply will soon come to an end, he said.
The earlier contract cancellation came about two months after DOGE separately promoted the end of a separate grant meant to fund a study examining cannabis use risks among LGBTQ+ individuals, non-binary people and heterosexual women.
Despite the cuts to some programs, it’s hardly the end for the University of Mississippi’s (UM) involvement in marijuana research.
“The UM School of Pharmacy will continue to play a leading role in the state and around the country in cannabis discovery, innovation and research through the National Center for Natural Products Research, the National Center for Cannabis Research and Education, and the Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research,” Batte said in the statement to Marijuana Moment.
The National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research (R3CR), hosted at Ole Miss, launched earlier this year.
For that project, the university partnered with Washington State University (WSU) and the United States Pharmacopoeia (USP), with support from a grant awarded by the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) under NIH. Ole Miss is leading the effort’s regulatory guidance core, while WSU will handle research support and USP will focus on research standards.
Ole Miss’s National Center for Natural Products Research is housing the NIH resource center to “provide cannabis research information through an interactive website, webinars, seed funding and conferences” to empower researchers to “generate more science-backed evidence,” it said in a press release at the time.
Meanwhile, the Drug Enforcement Administration has ramped up recruitment—recently urging people to join them on the frontlines of the “war on drugs,” even if they currently work as a “coffee barista” or otherwise have a non-law enforcement background.
It was also recently revealed that “marijuana” is one of nearly two dozen “controversial or high-profile topics” that staff and researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) are required to clear with higher-ups before writing about, according to a leaked memo from within the federal agency.
Separately, researchers involved in a federally funded clinical trial around marijuana wrote in a recent article in the American Journal of Medicine that further study into the substance is of “critical importance” given the millions of patients and consumers in legal states, but they warned that government restrictions “stifle scientific exploration of its potential and risks.”
Classifying cannabis as a Schedule I substance, said authors from the University of Maryland (UMD) schools of medicine and nursing, “traps researchers in a paradox: proving medical value requires studies, yet studies are heavily restricted.”
“As legalization outpaces science,” they added, “reform is imperative to close the evidence gap and meet society’s demands.”
Photo courtesy of Chris Wallis // Side Pocket Images.
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