From vapor self-administering-rodents to personal apps and Zoom smoke sessions, Ryan McLaughlin and Carrie Cuttler have had to get creative to study cannabis. The Washington State University researchers will discuss the legal challenges and the novel workarounds they’ve developed in a Science Pub talk at 6 p.m. on Feb. 8 at Paradise Creek Brewery and on Zoom.
Just downhill from the Pullman campus, local state-licensed dispensaries offer customers an array of high-potency cannabis products from whole flower to edibles and tinctures, but under federal law, the WSU researchers up the hill can’t study any of them—at least not directly.
“We need this research urgently because these high potency products are being sold, and they’re very popular,” said Cuttler, an assistant professor of psychology. “As researchers, we have our hands tied and can’t really touch these products. It’s important to find workarounds, so that we can start to better understand their acute effects because there’s really been no research on them.”
While recreational use of cannabis has been legal in Washington state since 2012, the federal government still classifies it as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning only researchers with special licenses can handle cannabis and only a particular kind. While a few companies recently won the ability to grow cannabis for study, most researchers are still restricted to using only a certain type of cannabis supplied by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
McLaughlin, an associate professor in integrative psychology and neuroscience, has that special license but recently received a shipment from NIDA that was almost all seeds, not remotely like the cannabis people actually use.
When he does have a usable sample, McLaughlin also tries to make sure his animal models are as realistic as possible. McLaughlin’s team has developed a method where the rats can self-administer vapor from whole cannabis, which more closely mimics how people use it.
“Before we started to do vapor models of cannabis exposure in our laboratory, the vast majority of researchers have been using injections of THC instead of actual exposure to cannabis,” said McLaughlin. “There are a lot of other things in cannabis besides THC and we know that people don’t inject cannabis either.”
Cuttler takes her studies out into the “wild” to better understand the effects of cannabis people actually use. She’s analyzed user-reported data from the Strainprint app and recently used Zoom to track and test psychological effects of cannabis on the users.
Both researchers will speak about their approaches to study cannabis in its natural environment on Tuesday in their talk: “Clearing the Smoke: Novel Approaches to Studying the Effects of Cannabis in the Wild.”
The Science Pub event series is hosted by WSU’s Entrepreneurial Faculty Ambassadors with the Palouse Discovery Science Center and held at Paradise Creek Brewery in Pullman—and since the pandemic began, also on Zoom. For more information, visit the EFA website or sign up for notifications of future events.
“Clearing the Smoke: Novel Approaches to Studying the Effects of Cannabis in the Wild”
Science Pub talk with Carrie Cuttler and Ryan McLaughlin
Feb. 8 | 6–7 p.m.
In person:
Paradise Creek Brewery in downtown Pullman.
On Zoom:
Off-site participants can register for Zoom. Those who live nearby are encouraged to place a food/drink order for pick up or delivery at Paradise Creek Brewery.
