In recent years, when politicians who are afraid of taking a stand on cannabis are asked questions about its legality, those politicians will often give answers like "more testing is needed."

Even if one believes that more tested is needed, however, it's not exactly as simple as you'd think it might be due to the fact that cannabis is federally prohibited under the Controlled Substances Act.

Despite the fact that more testing is really not even needed, laws will have to change before it's possible to even do the testing. That's what made politician answers to the question of whether or not cannabis should be legalized like the one mentioned at the top so safe. A translation of political stances like that: "we need more testing, but testing is impossible, so I sound reasonable without having to take an actual stand."

California is a little different than the rest of the country. Medical marijuana was made legal for qualified patients by Prop 215 in 1996, also known as the Compassionate Care Act. In 2000, a few years following Prop 215's passage, the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research was founded with the intention of advancing science and policy relating to the potential clinical benefits and limitations of cannabis and cannabinoids as medicine.

That's good, right? Surely, they've had nearly 20 years to do research, and should have gained all sorts of knowledge in that time? Well, that's the problem. Researchers are having an easier time finding synthetic THC to test, which isn't as useful as testing the real deal. That's like testing vitamin A pills to see how healthy or safe carrots are. On top of the lack of actual cannabis to test, the researchers also don't have enough access to CBD oil to test all of the claims made about its use. When actual cannabis is obtained, it's often lower in potency than a lot of stuff the patients benefiting from Prop 215 have historically been consuming.

If only there was some way to know how helpful and safe cannabis is....

Luckily, there are cases that can be pointed to that show the miracles that cannabis is capable of. Take Alexis Bortell, who is a pre-teen advocate for medical cannabis. Alexis uses medical cannabis (two doses of cannabis oil per day) to control a seizure disorder which started causing her to have frequent seizures when she was only 7 years old. She has also written a book on the subject and sued US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. She is doing it for all of the right reasons, as you can hear from her yourself in this video: