'Legalise marijuana for medical purposes' was the cry in Parliament that prompted the response by Charles Parry and Bronwyn Myers in this issue of SAMJ. Much parliamentary and public sentiment favoured such an action. But is this the wisest course to follow? The abuse of drugs is harmful to the individual, families and communities. Declaring war on drugs, as US President Nixon did in 1971, ther...

“Medical” marijuana is approved in 21 states and the District of Columbia for numerous conditions, including glaucoma, Crohn disease, posttraumatic stress disorder, epilepsy, Alzheimer disease, and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. Both the number of states and the number of approved indications for medical marijuana are expected to increase. Physicians will bear the responsibility of p...

Marijuana is classified by the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) as an illegal Schedule I drug which has no accepted medical use. However, recent studies have shown that medical marijuana is effective in controlling chronic non-cancer pain, alleviating nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy, treating wasting syndrome associated with AIDS, and controlling muscle spasms due to multiple scle...

Medical marijuana laws generate significant policy debates regarding drug policy. In particular, if marijuana is a complement or a gateway drug to hard drugs, these laws would increase not only the usage of marijuana but hard drugs such as cocaine and heroin. In this paper, I empirically study the relationships between marijuana and cocaine or heroin by analyzing data on drug possession arrests...

More and more states have passed laws that allow individuals to use marijuana for medical purposes. There is an ongoing, heated policy debate over whether these laws have increased marijuana use among non-patients. In this paper, I address that question empirically by studying marijuana possession arrests in cities from 1988 to 2008. I estimate fixed effects models with city-specific time trend...

OBJECTIVE Routine activities theory purports that crime occurs in places with a suitable target, motivated offender, and lack of guardianship. Medical marijuana dispensaries may be places that satisfy these conditions, but this has not yet been studied. The current study examined whether the density of medical marijuana dispensaries is associated with crime. METHOD An ecological, cross-sectio...

In this paper, concerns connected to the usage of marijuana in treating patients are extensively analyzed. It is revealed that physicians have been in conflict with the federal government as to whether to use cannabis for medical purposes or if they should consider prescribing other drugs. A large percentage of physicians admit that marijuana could be an effective drug in treating patients, esp...

The subject of the use medicinal products containing “medical marijuana” during therapy terminal patients has been extensive discussion until recently. Currently, such action is legal, but questions still arise not so much about possibility using medical marijuana in treatment terminally ill patients, implementation off-label treatment. analysis applicable legal provisions, views scholars field...