While she believes there are medications that work better than marijuana, there are some patients for whom it is the only solution. There are other doctors who agree that pot should be made available to patients but plan to vote against Measure 67. Dr. Charles Hoffman, a Baker City internist and past president of the Oregon Medical Association, thinks that patients should probably be given access to marijuana if they need it. But, he says, only after the Federal Drug Administration has approved it. Dr. Hoffman concedes that FDA approval for marijuana is far in the future, and as a doctor, he takes some responsibility for that.
Organized medicine has to take some of the blame.
While the merits of medicinal marijuana have been recorded at least anecdotally for, some say, thousands of years, it was only last year that the American Medical Association came out with a statement urging government study of marijuana. Until the research is done, the AMA is against allowing patients to use marijuana. He is satisfied with the studies that have been done on marijuana and believes that, for patients, the benefits outweigh possible risks. His goal is for marijuana to be reclassified by the federal government so that physicians can prescribe it. It isn't science or compassion that is keeping the medicine from patients, Bayer says.