If a university loses federal funding, all the researchers, faculty and students whose work and careers are supported with federal dollars would get shut down: cancer, astronomy, neuroscience, national endowment for the arts, everything. Grad students, teaching assistants (who have to do research), students in majors that don't get federal dollars but where the school is support by "indirects" from grants. Not just the few faculty studying weed. To get federal funding, a university has to comply with all federal rules university-wide which includes the DEA crap. The place for activism to end the DEA prohibition on researching weed is Congress and the White House.

Sensible federal laws, in this case that respect state rights!

Conservatives LOVE states rights if it's discriminating against LGBTQ people but strangely forget about when it comes to weed.

A progressive president who might appoint new agency directors who issue less restrictive interpretations of existing law.

"Even if the DEA did cut funding because a UW researcher was studying pot, it would become a rallying point for changes to federal law and for more pot research."

Right. The DEA has been violating civil rights and impeding science for decades, but sure, this will get people to wise up.

Maybe don't get high while you're writing articles at least.

"So if the state doesn't get its funding cut, why would UW?"

I couldn't agree more. UW is no doubt taking the easy out by playing it safe but if the LCB can relax their policies because the Fed never went after Washington even though they legally could have, one would think UW would have followed the LCB's lead.

Our bodies are filled with cannabinoid receptors and cannabis/hemp contains at least a hundred cannabinoids. Someone is going to take the lead on creating and testing all the different combinations and formulating hundreds if not thousands of new medications and it's a shame that UW won't be a part of that even though they're in one of the pioneering states in legalizing cannabis.

@1 and @2, the odds are pretty slim at this point that the DEA is going to come after anyone working with cannabis. True, they legally could but the fact is we just haven't seen any universities losing funding simply because they want to research cannabis.

@4 I don't think they will cut funding either, I just think it's ridiculous this guy thinks it would be a rallying point (for whom?) if they did. I'm sure a few stoners with nothing better to do during the day would protest for an hour or so, maybe get their picture in the Stranger, conveniently. But that's about it.

What we need is a people's initiative that recognizes that UW and WSU are the property of the people of Washington, and as they have benefited from the revenues created by our legal cannabis market, they need to make serving the people of Washington job #1, and not fear of the DEA. As such, absolutely no public money should be allowed to go to male varsity athletics so long as our research universities are not using their expertise to benefit our legal cannabis industry and consumers. To further motivate the State of Washington, the State shall assess no taxes on retail cannabis sales while our universities are not in compliance.

@1 is correct. As a disabled person who has tried to discuss cannabis with my doctors in Oregon and subsequently done research on the matter, it's about the money. No school, no teaching hospital, no research facility, no health organization that receives any federal funding in any way will discuss cannabis or research cannabis, period, full stop. Until cannabis is decriminalized federally, there will be no such research done anywhere. Where the research is being done is outside of the United States, where most of the groundbreaking medical research in all areas is being done (for example stem cell research in Israel, because the United States has banned research using fetal stem cells). Until this country decides to join the 21st century and stop allowing Puritan values to dictate our society, these things will not change. Anyone who believes this is not about the obscene amount of money spent on research in this country and R&D in the pharmaceutical field and Big Pharma's profits and doctors and scientists wanting to keep their jobs and their funding sources is 100% incorrect.