Forsch Komplementarmed. 1999 Oct; 6 Suppl 3(): 40-3.

The future of medical marijuana.

Grinspoon L.

Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA. [email protected]

The medical value of marijuana is becoming increasingly clear, as it proves to be a remarkably versatile, safe, and inexpensive drug. Arrangements now being proposed for making cannabis constituents medically available include quasi-legal buyers clubs, restrictive classification as a prescription drug, the isolation of individual cannabinoids, and the manufacture of synthetic analogs. Careful analysis potentially of this inexpensive drug shows that all these proposals are unworkable. Furthermore, cannabis has so many beneficial uses that the strictly medical ones should not be singled out for approval, and its medical potential cannot be fully realized as long as its use for any other purpose is prohibited. Therefore cannabis should be made available under laws similar to those now applied to alcohol. Copyright Copyright 1999 S. Karger GmbH, Freiburg