This is the first time that the HOD has taken a favorable position on medicinal marijuana. Most importantly, the report recognizes the existence of scientific clinical data showing marijuana's medical value. Since 1995, the MPP has pushed for additional studies of medicinal marijuana so that the FDA can approve it as a prescription medicine. The MPP protested this policy at a NIDA conference in July 1995 and again at an NIH conference in February 1997, attracting considerable media coverage. Despite the acknowledgment that doctors and patients should not be punished for discussing the medicinal use of marijuana, the report does not address or make recommendations regarding what should happen to the thousands of patients who take their doctors' advice and use medicinal marijuana.
Similar laws are on the books in every state except California.
Chuck Thomas, director of communications for the Washington, D.C.-based Marijuana Policy Project, attended the AMA House of Delegates' meeting to build support for the research recommendations and to urge the AMA to recommend that doctors should not be punished for recommending medicinal marijuana and patients should not be punished for using it. Six of these doctors testified in Dallas, giving firsthand accounts of their patients who have been arrested for using medicinal marijuana or who live in a constant state of fear of arrest. It should now be easier for researchers to conduct the few remaining studies necessary to enable the FDA to approve marijuana as a prescription medicine. Sadly, however, the AMA did not address the fact that thousands of medicinal marijuana-using patients risk arrest and prison until the research is completed. Many other health and medical organizations have taken favorable positions on medicinal marijuana, including the AIDS Action Council, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American Public Health Association, the British Medical Association, the Lymphoma Foundation of America, the National Association of People With AIDS, the MultipleSclerosis California Action Network, and several state nurses' associations.