The field of cannabis research has reached a new high, with scientists publishing a record-breaking number of papers on the topic in the past year. According to a keyword search of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed website, researchers worldwide published over 4,300 scientific papers on cannabis in the past year, surpassing the previous record of 4,200 papers published in the previous year.
This trend of increasing annual publication of cannabis-specific papers has been evident since 2010, with a total of over 30,000 papers published so far. In comparison, fewer than 3,000 papers were published about marijuana between 1990 and 1999, and fewer than 2,000 were published in the 1980s.
This uptick in scientific interest surrounding cannabis is largely due to researchers’ newfound focus on the plant’s therapeutic potential. A 2018 paper assessing trends in cannabis-related publications concluded that the total number of peer-reviewed publications dedicated to medical cannabis has increased ninefold since the year 2000.
NORML’s Deputy Director, Paul Armentano, commented on the trend, stating, “Despite claims by some that marijuana has yet to be subject to adequate scientific scrutiny, scientists’ interest in studying cannabis has increased exponentially in recent years, as has our understanding of the plant, its active constituents, their mechanisms of action, and their effects on both the user and society.” It is time for politicians and others to stop assessing cannabis through the lens of “what we don’t know” and instead start engaging in evidence-based discussions about marijuana and marijuana reform policies that are indicative of all that we do know.
The National Library of Medicine’s PubMed website, which has been available to the public online since 1996, currently cites over 42,500 scientific papers on marijuana. PubMed is a free resource supporting the search and retrieval of biomedical and life sciences literature.