I recently visited a medical-marijuana dispensary in Denver. I expected tie-dyed tapestries and Bob Marley posters. Instead, I found a well-designed shop that looked like any high-end health-supplement boutique.
The display cabinets were organized with various strains of marijuana and there were many non-smokable types, including transdermal patches, oral sprays and edibles. An employee proudly explained that in Colorado, dispensaries are required to grow at least 70 percent of their inventory, a boon to small operators. This particular dispensary grew 90 percent of its inventory and sourced the plants out to other small businesses that transformed them into the patches, sprays and edibles.
The business model was impressive. That the medical model was lacking soon became apparent.
When I asked about the difference among the various types of marijuana for sale, I was told that one strain was good for nights when one felt like staying home drawing, another for feeling more social at parties and a third for sitting on the couch watching an Adam Sandler movie. I did not hear about AIDS wasting, nausea, muscle spasms, glaucoma, seizures or the other conditions that marijuana is claimed to alleviate.
The employee knew a lot about marijuana, but no more about medicine than might be expected from someone working at that high-end health-supplement boutique the dispensary so resembled.
Is this acceptable for something that is being called "medical"?
The Minnesota Legislature is considering a bill allowing marijuana to be used for select medical diagnoses. I want to be very clear that I am neither for nor against marijuana. It is addictive; the U.S. National Survey on Drug Use and Health shows that 1 in 12 people who used marijuana last year were addicted to it. This places it between alcohol (1 in 21) and tobacco (1 in 3). Yet these drugs are legal. Marijuana can impair driving and worsen some psychiatric diagnoses, as does alcohol. It does not cause overdose deaths like we have seen with opioid pain relievers. If marijuana becomes available in Minnesota, I am confident that just as for alcohol, tobacco and pain relievers, we can implement effective prevention and treatment strategies to minimize its harm.
I oppose the current bill not because it is marijuana but because it is being called medical. The medical profession relies on standards of evidence to guide its practice. Multiple organizations including the august Institute of Medicine agree that some components of marijuana likely will have medical benefit. They also agree that the evidence is not yet there and that rather than widespread implementation, we need more research.