Medical cannabis research

Medical cannabis research includes any medical research on using cannabis. The earliest systematic studies of physiological effects of cannabis-derived chemical were conducted in the 1920's (see Fig. The number of publications about marijuana/cannabis). The level or research activity in this area remained relatively low and constant until 1966, when a 10-fold increase in publication activity occurred within 10 years. After the adoption of the Convention on Psychotropic Substances in 1971 there was a drop in research publishing, which continued till ca. 1987. Since then, cannabis research has been continuously on the rise. There is no apparent inflection point is 2013, when Uruguay "became the first country in the world to fully regulate its marijuana market, from production to consumption and distribution."^[1] Since then a large number of countries enacted policies on medical cannabis research, and there are substantial differences between such policies in different countries.