Background: Corporate influence on research is nothing new, with numerous examples highlighting the role that sugar, oil, tobacco, alcohol, and other industries have played in shaping public health science and messaging. In 1946 the RJ Reynolds Tobacco company famously gave physicians cartons of Camel cigarettes to solicit their endorsement that Camels were the safest ones on the market. In response to the long history of industry influence efforts, guidelines have been established for how academic researchers and others engage with and report their activities in partnership with industry.
Objectives: This paper seeks to identify established guidelines for researchers in other industries and consider how they can be applied or modified for use with the nascent cannabis industry. We will then present a model set of guidelines for cannabis researchers.
Methods: An environmental scan of current regulations, rules, and best practices in the alcohol and tobacco industry’s interactions with researchers. A literature review on the history of industry engagement with academic researchers, the methods by which industry tries to shape research findings, and the trajectory of best practice guidelines for researchers.
Implications: By developing best practice guidelines early in the history of legalized cannabis we can help both researchers and industry avoid the conflicts that undermine trust in scientific findings about these products and industries. While these guidelines are designed for the commercial nature of the Canadian industry, it has applicability to other international models and relevance to researchers in countries that legalize non-medical cannabis.
Dr. Daniel Bear has been working in drug policy since 2003, when he started and led a chapter of Students for Sensible Drug Policy while a student at UC Santa Cruz. He went on to earn his MSc and PhD in Social Policy from The London School of Economics and Political Science. He has been a Professor in the Faculty of Social and Community Services (FSCS) at Humber College in Toronto for eight years and is currently the Director of the Humber Centre for Social Innovation. He is also the Principal Consultant at Responsum Consulting, where he works with clients such as the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse to support knowledge translation efforts around cannabis research.
Dr. Kari Kramp is the Senior Scientific Manager within the Applied Research and Innovation Office at Loyalist College. Dr. Kramp was pivitol in the development of the Centre for Natural Products (CNP) at Loyalist College, a nationally recognized Technology Access Centre. Within the CNP, Dr. Kramp has compliance oversight of their cannabis - reserach licence and is identified as "Head of Laboratory" on their cannabis - analytical testing licence. She is the Qualified Person in Charge (QPIC) on their Controlled Drugs and Substances Licence to support research activities on psilocybin and psilocin.
Kari is an expert in innovative green technology (e.g., supercritical CO2 extraction), which supports the extraction of components from natural products, in view of new product development and process improvements.
Dr. Kramp provides leadership and oversees the Centre’s research program by building existing and developing new research capacity. This involves supporting outreach efforts and identifying partners, projects, and opportunities; actively sourcing and applying for funding from various industries and organizations; conducting industry-based research projects and building research teams with diverse industry partners, faculty, and students; developing training and workshops; development of research capacities (human, methodological and technological) and communicating this capacity at meetings, conventions, and conferences.
She completed her PhD (Biology) at the Centre for Advanced Research in Environmental Genomics at the University of Ottawa, where she investigated several biosynthetic classes of secondary metabolites and conducted advanced methods of phytochemical characterization to support research on the role (and risks) of medicinal plants in animal and human health. She earned her MSc (Chemistry) and honours BSc (Chemistry) at Virginia Commonwealth University.