Clearly marijuana is worth investigating and even providing as a medicine for pain relief, severe nausea, and appetite stimulation for seriously ill patients. A medical marijuana policy that promises to be friendly to physicians, patients and scientific research will be new in every respect. Legal-access program not outlined yet Despite his overall praise for the new NIH policy, Zimmerman was critical of its failure to address the pressing issue of legal access to marijuana for patients. The IOM investigators called this an important, interim step for patients who have no real alternatives while new medical marijuana research gets under way. Such a program represents the only reliable way patients across the country can obtain safe, legal supplies of medical marijuana for the next several years, before all the new studies are completed.
Political efforts are still necessary.
All of our efforts are meant to maximize the number of seriously ill patients who have medical marijuana as an option. And we now see the federal government beginning to make needed changes to policies that previously had been hostile and distinctly un-scientific. Instead, we will work to keep the government honest, and to drive policy toward safe, legal access to marijuana for those patients who need it.