“The use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes has been legal in certain jurisdictions of the United States for several decades. It is stunning that the medical establishment largely remains unwilling to acknowledge this reality and that so many health professionals in training continue to profess willful ignorance about this important topic.”
The measure makes numerous changes to the state’s medical program — several of which may hamper patients’ access to medical cannabis products.
The DEA’s website did not provide a timeline as to when it anticipates finalizing the applicants’ grow authorizations or when it plans to take actions on the dozens of remaining applications that are still pending before the agency.
“What we see is that the trends in legal states like Colorado, Washington, Oregon and California are generally no different than the traffic safety trends in other states that haven’t changed their marijuana laws.”
“[T]he implementation of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) and recreational marijuana laws (RMLs) reduced morphine milligram equivalents per enrollee by seven percent and 13 percent, respectively.”
Since 2010, scientists have published over 23,000 peer-reviewed papers on cannabis, with the annual number of papers increasing every year.
For over five decades, federal regulators have only authorized a single licensee – the University of Mississippi – to cultivate cannabis plants for use in FDA-approved clinical studies.
“These common-sense regulatory changes are necessary and long overdue. The reality that most high-schoolers have easier access to cannabis than do our nation’s top scientists is the height of absurdity and an indictment of the current system.”