Politics
Federal Agency Says It Halted Marijuana Cultivation Contract Following Cost-Cutting Order From Trump’s DOGE
Officials at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) say the federal agency’s recent decision to halt its longstanding orders of research marijuana supplied by the University of Mississippi is the result of a cost-cutting directive from the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
But the move, NIDA said, isn’t expected to interrupt the availability of cannabis for government-approved research.
A recent executive order—titled “Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ Cost Efficiency Initiative”—led to the Department of Health and Human Services conducting “a comprehensive review of all existing contracts to identify opportunities for cost reduction,” NIDA representatives said in an email to Marijuana Moment.
“As a result of this initiative, no new task orders for cannabis cultivation have been issued,” the email explains. “That said, the NIDA Drug Supply Program maintains an existing inventory of cannabis and cannabis-derived products, which remain available for approved research.”
NIDA’s email also clarified that while the agency has not issued new orders for research cannabis, its “contract with the University of Mississippi to grow cannabis for research remains in place,” active until 2028.
The agency does not contract with other growers, it confirmed in a follow-up email.
“The NIDA-supported marijuana cultivation contract is only with the University of Mississippi,” it said.
While the University of Mississippi for decades 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.
Nevertheless, NIDA exclusively contracted Ole Miss to provide marijuana for its Drug Supply Program, which allows researchers working on federally approved studies to obtain cannabis for free.
In the wake of NIDA’s recent halt of its orders, news of which was first reported by Cannabis Wire, some other DEA-approved cultivators are warning that future marijuana research could be at risk.
Maine-based Maridose said in a press release Wednesday, for example, that NIDA’s cancellation “has created uncertainty regarding the future of cannabis research.”
“While existing inventory produced under this program is currently sufficient to support immediate research needs through the end of 2025, there is no assurance that additional product will be available once those supplies are exhausted,” the company said. “This disruption could jeopardize ongoing clinical and preclinical studies, and impede progress on critical cannabis research across the country.”
Researchers conducting federally approved studies can obtain cannabis through any of the DEA-approved cultivators, though materials cost more than going through the free Drug Supply Program.
Growers like Maridose say they’re prepared to fill any unmet demand.
“Our team is committed to working with researchers to ensure uninterrupted access to high-quality materials for both current and future studies,” founder Richard Shain said in the company’s release. “While the loss of the University of Mississippi program may present short-term challenges, Maridose stands ready to help fill that gap.”
Others, however, said there was little risk that NIDA’s move would impact research. A lack of funding and regulatory hurdles as the result of cannabis’s Schedule I status—not a scarcity of research marijuana—are what’s holding back clinical studies, they said.
Sue Sisley, a researcher at the Scottsdale Research Institute (SRI), which is itself DEA-licensed cannabis cultivator, said NIDA severing its order with Ole Miss “doesn’t affect Scottsdale Research Institute at all.”
“We grow our own high-quality (comparable to real world) marijuana,” she told Marijuana Moment in an email. “We use it for our own FDA [Food and Drug Administration] studies and we grow to supply other studies. So U Miss closing down new cannabis orders is irrelevant.”
As for barriers to research, Sisley emphasized that there is “barely any new marijuana research happening,” calling the amount of funding available “minuscule compared to other areas.”
“And therefore the demand for new research cannabis is minimal,” she explained.
In fact, Sisley cheered the end of the Ole Miss order.
“This is a brilliant move by the Trump admin,” she wrote. “I applaud this administration for having the courage to finally acknowledge that there was no need to have only one federally legal supplier that was receiving millions in government money annually.”
“The bottom line is that we are growing our own cannabis and it’s ten times better than anything that’s grown at the University of Mississippi,” the researcher added, noting that SRI “just supplied 400 bottles of low-THC cannabis tincture…for a phase 1 trial examining cannabis oil treating autism.”
Sisley and others in past years have complained about the quality cannabis grown by the University of Mississippi and supplied through NIDA, claiming that some provided samples wouldn’t even pass basic testing standards in state-legal cannabis markets. Nevertheless, a study late last year by researchers at Ole Miss asserted that cannabis produced at the school was “very similar” to products found on state-legal markets.
“The pause between NIDA and Ole Miss highlights what many in the research community have known for years,” Justin Abril, co-founder of DEA-licensed cultivator Royal Emerald Pharmaceuticals, said in an email to Marijuana Moment. “There’s been limited demand for NIDA supplied cannabis due to well-documented concerns about quality, consistency, and lack of suitability for pharmaceutical development.”
“The fact that NIDA reports having excess material on hand speaks for itself,” Abril added. “Now that there are multiple DEA-licensed manufacturers online and news of the intended rescheduling, researchers finally have access to pharmaceutical grade material appropriate for investigational studies.”
Sisley at SRI said it’s time to give other growers—who haven’t had government subsidies—an opportunity to fill the demand for research marijuana.
“Let’s give these other 10 DEA licensed growers a chance to start growing research grade cannabis and taking over where university of Mississippi is now suddenly unfunded,” she said, noting that at SRI, “we’ve never had an opportunity to enjoy government money flowing month after month.”
Even leadership at Maridose, which warned that NIDA’s move could threaten future research, think the University of Mississippi order cancellation could eventually improve the supply of cannabis used for clinical studies.
“The cancellation should have a positive effect on the quality of research because the cannabis obtained from other DEA manufacturers will be more analogous to what is sold to the public,” founder Richard Shain said in an email. “DOGE’s cancellation of the DSP contract makes perfect business sense,” he added, noting that “demand was decreasing and other non-government sources are available.”
Shain also said he doubted the NIDA development signaled skepticism by the Trump administration toward marijuana research generally.
“No manufacturing licenses were canceled and the government grant establishing the Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoids (R3CR) was not affected,” he said, referring to another federally funded marijuana facility housed at Ole Miss. “This seems to indicate the administration support for cannabis research.”
Mahmoud ElSohly—who has long helmed the University of Mississippi cannabis cultivation and research division, contracted as part of NIDA’s drug supply program—declined to offer additional reaction last week on the order cancellation. In past comments to Marijuana Moment, he’s challenged the claims that the school’s cannabis is of low quality.
An Ole Miss spokesperson, meanwhile, confirmed to Marijuana Moment that “NIDA has chosen not to award the current year task order to the University of Mississippi for cannabis production.”
“The university has two years remaining on its federal contract,” added Jacob Batte, the school’s director of news and media relations, “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.”
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 National Institute of Standards and Technology.
