TT may be late in research of the medicinal value of marijuana, but it is not too late to step up to the plate and catch up with other countries. This according to professor of biotechnology and plant microbiology Jayaraj Jayaraman at the JSC meeting on social services and public administration yesterday.
Jayarama said the biggest stumbling block was the legality of the herb and availability of funding. He said TT did not need to copy anyone, but do something completely different.
Nigel Jalsa, lecturer, chemistry/biochemicals, said marijuana was very poorly studied in this country. He said it has been taking up a lot of steam since last year with research throughtout the world and could almost be described as low hanging fruit. He said TT had the techniques to isolate and characterise the compounds in marijuana.