Medical

PHOENIX - The Arizona Supreme Court says immunity provided doctors under the state's medical marijuana law for certifying patients to use pot only applies to the medical certifications, not other conduct such as making false statements in documents.
The ruling Friday overturns a lower court's decision that upheld dismissal of forgery and fraud charges against a physician on grounds that he was protected under the medical marijuana's law immunity provision.
Dr. Robert Gear was charged in Navajo County after signing a medical marijuana certification for a police informant based on his examination but before receiving a year's worth of the patient's records.

But “having medical value” isn’t the same thing as “being a medicine.” A medicine is a material of known chemical composition and dosage that has been shown in clinical trials to be safe and effective in the management of some condition in some patient population. By that standard, natural cannabis can’t be a medicine, simply because natural cannabis varies so widely in its chemical content: not only from one strain to another, but from one plant to another and even from one bud to another from the same plant.

PLEASE note:  23 states in the US have legalized marijuana- using the entire plant as medicine not isolating specific cannabinoids as done in research labs.
However, Dr. McCormick was quick to warn of the dangers of individuals self-medicating, but stated he hopes the research would lead to a "safe synthetic equivalent being available in the future."

“Individuals considering cannabinoids as a possible treatment for their symptoms should discuss the potential benefits and harms with their doctor,” said Penny Whiting of University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust in the UK.

When it came to the use of cannabinoids for treatment of weight loss in HIV/AIDS patients, nausea and vomiting due to chemotherapy, sleep disorders and Tourette syndrome, the researchers found there was low-quality evidence that the compounds were effective, while there was very low-quality evidence supporting the effectiveness of cannabinoids in the treatment of anxiety.

The raw cannabis plant has no medicinal value. For the same reasons people no longer chew bark to cure headaches but instead buy aspirin, there is no medical reason to smoke pot. The pharmaceutical profession exists to isolate active medical ingredients from herbs and plants (or synthesize them) and to provide safe, standardized doses with minimal side effects. This is how every other drug works. There is no scientific or medical reason to make marijuana an exception.

Marijuana does possess certain medicinal properties. So does opium. But we don’t allow unscrupulous quacks to write raw opium prescriptions for anyone willing to pay $65. And if we did, would anybody be surprised that the vast majority of opium buyers were not recovering from surgery—and that many of them shared or resold some of their opium to underage users?