On June 20, 2017, Battelle, an Ohio-based non-profit research and development organization that has studied tobacco for the past 50 years, announced that it would be expanding its research efforts to include marijuana and opioids.

“As concerns grow about opioids, marijuana becomes more readily available and new tobacco products like e-cigarettes gain traction, we realized that there are critical public health questions to answer,” said Joe Berger, Battelle’s General Manager of Health and Consumer Solutions, in a press release. “The Battelle Public Health Center for Substance Use will conduct science-based research to address these issues, building on more than 50 years of experience in tobacco research, from measuring the impact of second-hand smoke to understanding the triggers that prompt smokers to light up.”

As a part of its expansion, Battelle has launched the Battelle Public Health Center for Substance Use Research and hired Scott Novak, PhD, as a Senior Research Scientist and Research Director for Substance Abuse, and Erica Peters, one of Battelle’s principal research scientists, will head up the marijuana research.

“We’re really trying to find out the balance of risk and benefits of marijuana use,” Peters told The Columbus Dispatch.