• 06
  • July
    2010

While advocates for marijuana's medical use continue to push its healing benefits, they may not realize how much it will take, and cost, to transform marijuana from street drug to prescription medicine.

In the world of new prescription drugs, clinical trials and various stages of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other government approvals are the norm, as well as developing new regulations to control how they are sold and administered. So far, however, the U.S. government has remained silent on the issue of medical marijuana, refusing to pass any federal rules about it and causing state-run programs to regulate how it is used or dispensed, or not, as they see fit.

Currently in Colorado and other states with laws that legalize the use of medical marijuana for statutorily defined conditions, such as cancer and glaucoma, dispensaries enjoy freedom from the federal regulations that plague pharmaceutical manufacturers. In fact, the quality of the marijuana and the care shown to patients varies widely across Colorado dispensaries under the current self-monitoring system.

The lack of federal regulation, as well as the nature of having to smoke a raw plant to receive its healing benefits, causes the bulk of drug researchers and other medical professionals to question marijuana's medicinal effectiveness. As a 1999 report from the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine proclaims, "If there is any future for marijuana as a medicine, it lies in its isolated components."

This notion has spurred new research to prove how effective marijuana is in relieving symptoms of some illnesses, especially in states like Colorado where medical marijuana dispensaries are already open for business. While new research continues to show that marijuana has both good and bad effects on some patients, it is still considered a Schedule I controlled substance by the federal government, meaning that it cannot be legitimately prescribed by doctors or sold by pharmacies unless the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) places it in a less-restrictive category.

For now, however, the fact remains that the more mature and accepted marijuana becomes in the world of medicine, the more regulated and inaccessible it will be to patients who find it useful now.

Related Resource:

Medical Marijuana Advocates Seek Society's Approval (Denver Post)