cannabisnews.com: Medical Marijuana Stand Clarified





Medical Marijuana Stand Clarified
Posted by FoM on May 25, 2000 at 16:12:38 PT
By Jack C. Lewin, M.D.
Source: Honolulu Advertiser
Writing in Island Voices, May 9, Pamela Lichty stated that numerous medical organizations, including the California Medical Association (CMA), have "supported the use of medical marijuana." The article was critical of the Hawaii Medical Association’s position on the recent legislation that authorizes, under state law, the use of marijuana for medical purposes.
Lichty supported her statement concerning CMA’s policy by quoting a recent amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief filed by CMA in the federal civil litigation brought by the Department of Justice against several California cannabis buyers’ clubs.I would like to clarify CMA’s position on the subject: Contrary to Lichty’s contention, CMA neither supports nor opposes the medical use of marijuana. Rather, CMA has consistently maintained its position that marijuana should be widely available for therapeutic use only if there have been properly controlled clinical studies proving that it is efficacious.CMA has called upon the federal government to facilitate the availability of high-quality inhaled marijuana and to take other necessary steps to promote such research. CMA supports the removal of marijuana from Schedule I in order to allow greater access for research as well as efforts to obtain federal approval for limited prescriptive access and for an appropriately regulated distribution system.However, we continue to believe the requirements of the state and federal drug laws serve a critically important function in protecting patients from potentially inefficacious and even dangerous drugs. Hence, CMA does not support the use of the legislative or initiative process to make any unproven and insufficiently tested medicine available to the public. For those reasons, CMA opposed Proposition 215 when it was before the electorate in California.The brief from which Lichty quoted was filed, not specifically to support the medical use of marijuana, but to support the concept of "medical necessity" recently articulated in that litigation by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In the brief, CMA argued that when a patient has tried all available standard therapies without success, that patient with the support and approval of his or her physician should be free to explore other, less conventional treatments.Such desperate patients, their physicians and others who attempt to aid them should be neither punished nor unnecessarily impeded by governmental enforcement agencies. CMA supported the right of a patient and physician to use any potentially therapeutic modality that may assuage the suffering of a patient who can find relief in no other way.Jack C. Lewin, M.D.Executive Vice President & CEO, California Medical AssociationFormer Director of Hawaii Department of Health Published: May 25, 2000© Copyright 2000 The Honolulu AdvertiserRelated Articles & Web Sites:Drug Policy Forum Of Hawaiihttp://www.drugsense.org/dpfhi/California Medical Association http://www.cmanet.org/ Marijuana Bill Misunderstood http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5664.shtmlMarijuana Act Creates Enforcement Bramblehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread5524.shtml
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