Taxpayer, this edition of Waste of the Week (WOW) is called “Edible Arrangements.”

We’re not talking about the chocolate-covered fruit baskets you send when you have no idea what to give someone. Nope — we’re talking about marijuana edibles. 

You know…. Weed. Reefer. Pot. Grass. Ganja. Wacky tobacky. Jazz cabbage. The devil’s lettuce.

Taxpayer, White Coat Waste Project (WCW) investigators discovered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) SECRETLY paid white coats in Oregon to get monkeys stoned.

Then, they proceeded to hide how much of your tax money they wasted on the experiments… breaking federal transparency law!

The COST Act: Follow this secure link RIGHT NOW and urge your members of Congress to support the COST Act, which would cut tax funding for rogue labs like this.

Taxpayer, if you don’t know, ‘edibles’ are foods or beverages infused with marijuana.

They’re frequently used by medical cannabis patients, as the dosages are standardized and they don’t need to be smoked.

They’re also popular among college students, suburban mothers, music festival aficionados, libertarians, and white coats at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). 

During the experiments, 14 macaque monkeys were given a THC edible every day for up to four months to see whether THC affected the females’ menstrual cycles and the males’ fertility.

You’re paying for these experiments — and the price tag is so high, even Snoop Dogg would blush: the project received over $14 million last year alone.

But Taxpayer, you wouldn’t know how much you were paying for these experiments, even if you dug deep and searched for OHSU’s press releases about them. (We did it for you: they’re available here and here).

Even though the releases do indicate that the experiments were “supported by National Institutes of Health grants,” they fail to include three specific elements:

• The percentage of the total costs of the experiments financed with taxpayer money
• The dollar amount of taxpayer funds used in the experiments; and
• The percentage and dollar amount of the experiment funded by non-government sources.

Including these three data points in press releases isn’t just good for transparency — it’s federal law. Called the “Stevens Amendment,” these pro-taxpayer transparency requirements have been included in government funding bills for over thirty years.

OHSU’s ‘edible’ experiments broke the law…so WCW made ‘arrangements’ to hold them accountable. We filed a complaint to the NIH, outlining OHSU’s Stevens Amendment violations.

Maybe these white coats were embarrassed to disclose the costs of their monkey business to the taxpayers who funded them…especially since cannabis is legal for recreational and medical use in Oregon, studies with human volunteers would have been easy to arrange.

Or maybe OHSU just doesn’t care about following federal law. A lot of universities don’t.

Recently, we filed a similar complaint against the University of Massachusetts – Amherst, and we’ve detailed Stevens Amendment violations from university white coats again and again and again and again. 

This is why the COST Act, introduced by Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) and Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), is such important legislation. If passed, it would strengthen the enforcement of transparency law, making it possible to withhold funds from institutions that don’t comply.

With so many universities defying the law, it’s long past time for a #RogueLabRollback.

WCW is proud to be the ONLY group to shut down a primate lab in the United States in the last half-decade — in fact, we’ve SHUT DOWN THREE government labs — and with your help, we’ll close this rogue lab, too!

The COST Act: Please this secure link RIGHT NOW and urge your members of Congress to support the COST Act.