AMA

Cannabis in Medicine: A Primer for Health Care Professionals

On the first day of a National Medical Cannabis Unity Conference, an accredited cannabinoid…

Cannabis May Lead to New Autoimmune Disorder Treatments

Cannabis May Lead to New Autoimmune Disorder Treatments Cannabis may offer hope to people with…

California Medical Association Adopts Official Policy to Legalize Marijuana

By Molly Weedn  |  Published in California Medical Association The California Medical Association (CMA) has…

A Profound Moment for American Marijuana

By Chris Goldstein |  Published in Freedom is Green The spring of 2011 has…

Top 5 Supreme Court Cases to End the Marijuana Crimes

By Hoam Rogh |  Published in Hawaiian News Daily Americans love them some freedom! Due…

American Medical Association Agrees Marijuana May Have Analgesic Benefits

American Medical Association Agrees Marijuana May Have Analgesic Benefits The American Medical Association (AMA)…

AMA Asks Federal Government to Redefine Marijuana to Possess Medicinal Values

In a landmark reversal, the American Medical Association urged the federal government to review marijuana’s schedule classification from a Schedule I drug, meaning it has no medicinal value, so that further ‘development of cannabinoid-based medicines’ can be achieved.

Since 1970, the only government-based research in the country was in the University of Mississippi, where medical marijuana has been grown and distributed, but with little research and control. With the AMA requesting marijuana be reclassified so that medicine can further the advancements of medical marijuana research and help determine the efficacy of medical cannabis for all it’s potential.

The Marginalization of Medical Marijuana

I started doing recommendations for the medical use of cannabis in the spring of 2000. I have noticed a real thawing on the attitude of physicians. I have at least 80 physicians in Southern Santa Barbara county refer one of more of their patients to me to evaluate them for recommendations for the medical use of cannabis under the terms of proposition 215. I have also found that physicians have become more and more curious about how this stuff works. Americans for Safe Access, about two years ago, asked me to speak to Kaiser Hospital in San Jose because somebody contacted them and would like to have a doctor come in and talk to us about this (medical cannabis). And the physicians listened to that with at least some respect and some with great interest. There were some people that didn’t agree. I think part of that is the way we marginalize herbal medicine as I discussed earlier. We have looked at manufactured medicines as being easier to characterize and easier to understand. But what we tend to forget as physicians I think, is that we have evolved with the plants and that manufactured pharmaceuticals contain structures that aren’t found in nature and are more difficult for the body to metabolize than structures that are found in nature.