I have no idea how hard it is really but if it's true it is impossible, it is infuriating. People do research on substances that can kill a person with an invisible amount, blow up buildings, poison vast areas, all kinds of deadly things. But take a drug that any smart high-schooler can (and frequently does) access it - and it's impossible to research it! This is so infuriatingly insane.
There are plenty of pharmaceutical drugs out in the wild that have known side-effects. Chemotherapy completely nukes a person's body but is legal because the harm it induces is deemed worth the problem it solves (cancer).
Despite this, marijuana which is in easy circulation on the streets in dubious forms of dosage/strength, has such a political air over it that most countries still won't even look into the medical applications of it!
As a scientist, the double standards are incredibly frustrating!
In US I think it's even worse - it is known there are medical applications of it but the federal government just pretends they do not exist and still qualifies cannabis as "drug that has no known medical use". They don't refuse to look - they look, see, know it exists and still say "no, it doesn't exist".
"It is often difficult for researchers to gain access to the quantity, quality, and type of cannabis product necessary to address specific research questions on the health effects of cannabis use"
Being unable to research the effects of specific strains and how cannabis is administered beyond oral or combustible methods limits our understanding of the true net effect in reality. Different methods for vaporizing and strains with low THC - high CBD would likely show very little evidence for negative effects on the user. However, consistent tobacco rolled cannabis cigars for a recreational user may show loads of evidence for negative effects on health. Like eating unhealthy vs eating healthy. Not all food is created equal, just like cannabis and its methods of use.
As a computationalist, I believe it is perhaps when we have full understanding of the internal workings of the brain and how different components interact with each other to ensure the proper functioning of the mind in such a degree that it is possible to simulate one with behaviour indistinguishable from that of its biological counterpart then we can figure out exactly what effect THC can have on computations performed by the brain and how that would subsequently affect a person's health.
I always discover something new about the mind when I do marijuana. Or perhaps that is merely how it feels like.
