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In a new series of reports, we turn our attention to cannabis, a substance with a long history of use that has recently emerged as a controversial and challenging issue in both European and wider international drug policy debates. Cannabis is the most commonly used illicit drug in Europe.
Many of those states in which medical marijuana is legal require physician involvement to facilitate patient access. In addition, physicians may have ethical objections to medical marijuana use or may not believe there is adequate scientific evidence to support its use.
settings where institutional policies reflect an eth-ical objection to medical marijuana, such as reli-giously affiliated hospitals which may have a blan-ket policy against physicians recommending any illicit substance. All these considerations have im-plications for how physicians ought to respond to legal patient requests for medical marijuana.
The principles of biomedical ethics--beneficence and nonmaleficence, respect for autonomy, and justice--can help to guide cannabis care. To uphold the principles of beneficence and nonmaleficence, providers should recommend cannabis only for conditions where the evidence base is well-established.
The main objection to the medical use of marijuana by the federal government is largely attributable today to a national policy of zero-tolerance toward illicit drugs. This objection is extended to include a prohibition on legalizing marijuana for medical purposes as well, and is underscored by three suppositions initially outlined during the ...
Example of educational graphic to explain the therapeutic benefits of THC and CBD 16. Because of the trend of legalizing the use of medical marijuana in more than half of all states, some medical organizations support reclassification of marijuana at the federal level as a Schedule II controlled substance. 7 Furthermore, the medical marijuana treatment industry, pharmaceutical companies, and ...
Ethics, Evidence, and Politics. Controversy in the United States about the decriminalization of cannabis to allow health care providers to recommend it for therapeutic use (medical marijuana) has been based on varying policies and beliefs about cannabis rather than on scientific evidence.
