Federal Agency Wants People Who Have ‘Lived Or Living Experience With Drug Use’ To Help Shape Research Agenda

The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) announced this month that it’s creating a new working group made up of “people with lived or living experience with drug use,” meant to advise on ways to “enhance and increase meaningful engagement” with current or former substance users in government-funded research.

The agency is seeking prospective members for the group “who identify as having current or former experience themselves with substance use or substance use disorder, or as a family member or caregiver of someone who does.”

“Are you passionate about making sure the perspectives of people who use or have used drugs are incorporated into research?” asks a NIDA flyer about the new body. “Do you want to help shape expectations for meaningfully engaging people with lived and living experience of substance use in research?”

Notably, the agency appears to be looking for not only people in recovery, with formal substance use disorder diagnoses or even whose drug use is problematic. NIDA’s descriptions repeatedly use more encompassing phrases along the lines of “lived or living experience of substance use,” indicating that people who use marijuana or psychedelics recreationally without regret are welcome to join the effort to help shape the federal drug research agenda.

Beginning next year and stretching, the announcement says, the workgroup will meet virtually approximately three to four times a year, for one to two hours at a time. Its work will stretch “potentially into 2026.”

The group will be housed under the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse (NACDA), an 18-person body of experts and members of the public that advises NIDA on various matters. Current NACDA members will also participate as representatives on the new workgroup, a NIDA webpage about the new program says.

This new workgroup will be made up of people with lived/living experience with substance use, and will advise on ways to enhance and increase meaningful community engagement in NIDA-funded research. Submit apps by Jan. 10. For more info & to apply: https://t.co/B17920BYgU (2/2)

— NIDAnews (@NIDAnews) November 21, 2024

People who wish to be considered should email the agency a brief personal statement “in any format (written, audio, or video recorded)” by January 10, it explains:

In your statement, you might include:

• • How your relevant lived or living expertise would be an asset to the workgroup.
  • A brief description of any substance use-related research you have been involved in before in any capacity (researcher, advisor, or participant). Previous experience with research is not required.
  • If you are comfortable, please share your geographic and demographic (age, race/ethnicity, gender) information so we can ensure we engage a diverse set of voices in the group.

The working group’s Zoom meetings will not be public, but the agency noted that names of selected members will be considered public information. Registered lobbyists are ineligible.

Members will be paid $200 per meeting, the NIDA website says, “and there will be no requirements for work outside of meeting times.”

Separately, a recent request for proposals posted by NIDA indicated the agency is also seeking contractors capable of rolling thousands of cannabis joints for federally approved research purposes.

NIDA makes available to researchers “marijuana cigarettes” and certain other controlled substances, the agency says in the new document, pointing out that demand “grew significantly” in recent years, in large part due to “rapidly expanding research efforts in the area of drug abuse.”

Now officials are looking for providers who can manufacture cannabis joints in bulk as well as prepare, “preferably by hand-rolling, a small batch of marijuana cigarettes within a range of specified delta-9-THC, or cannabidiol (CBD), or both” as required by NIDA.

A recent study led by one of the only people permitted by the U.S. government to grow marijuana for research purposes, meanwhile, found that cannabis available across the country is “basically the same” in terms of its primary cannabinoid content—and is also “very similar to the chemical profile of the research cannabis” available through the NIDA’s Drug Supply Program.

“The chemical profile of the illicit cannabis in the different regions of the USA as well as the ‘state legal cannabis’ available in dispensaries,” the paper said, “is very similar to the chemical profile of the research cannabis available in the Drug Supply Program (DSP), provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) for research in this country.”

At least historically, that hasn’t always been the case. During a dustup in 2017, researchers who were studying the use of cannabis to treat PTSD in military veterans drew attention what they said was virtually unusable material sent by NIDA.

NIDA, which earlier this year cited its various marijuana and psychedelics research efforts in an effort to justify its congressional funding, has also been working to study peripheral cannabis-related matters, like how to improve product warning labels to better inform people about the risks of marijuana use.

In 2022, NIDA additionally created its so-called “cannabis registry” meant to “capture data on cannabis product use and health outcomes, and conduct testing on products associated with adverse outcomes.”

Federal agencies have also been calling for increased production of controlled substances like cannabis and psychedelics amid heightened demand from researchers. In September, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) released new quotas for the production of Schedule I and Schedule II controlled substances for research purposes—calling for an increase in the manufacturing of the psychedelics ibogaine, psilocybin and psilocyn.

DEA also proposed dramatic increases in cannabis and psychedelics production in 2022, similarly citing research demands.

NIDA, for its part, sent out a separate request for proposals in 2022 seeking a contractor to grow, harvest and analyze millions of grams of marijuana for research purposes. The agency said it was seeking manufacturers capable of cultivating, testing and rolling joints of about four million grams of cannabis over a five-year period.

That same year, NIDA opened the doors to authorizing additional cannabis growers for research purposes. The agency for decades worked with the same single marijuana farm at the University of Mississippi, and scientists had long been critical about the quality of the cannabis and extracts produced at the facility.

In 2019, meanwhile, NIDA sent out a separate request soliciting help to “acquire, develop and produce” joints for research purposes.

Separately, NIDA Director Nora Volkow argued in a recent blog post that commercial interests are driving up rates of drug use and substance misuse disorder.

While she’s long expressed concerns about criminalization as a policy, Volkow raised a number of complaints with the commercial marijuana market that’s expanded as a result of the state-level legalization movement. And although lawmakers and health agencies have seen progress in combating the use of other legal substances, such as tobacco, she said the marijuana industry has “presented new opportunities for commercial interests to drive drug consumption across all ages and demographics.”

Volkow has previously recognized that data shows rates of youth marijuana use have remained stable despite her concerns about the potential impact of legalization, evidenced by multiple federally funded surveys, for example.

Volkow has maintained her stance that criminalization is not an effective approach to drug control, however. She’s previously said that the drug war “created a structurally racist system” in which Black people are treated “worse” than others. And she’s called on the government to move “away from criminalization,” arguing that the country’s failure to offer drug treatment to incarcerated people only exacerbates the ongoing opioid overdose crisis.

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