Indopedia All Things Marijuana
By Fred Gardner
The Medical Board of California (MBC) will vote today (10/27) to adopt “Guidelines for the Recommendation of Cannabis for Medical Purposes.” The guidelines were drafted by a two-member task force that relied heavily on input from the Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR) at UC San Diego. The MBC task force has dropped the most onerous provisions promoted by the Federation of State Medical Boards in their “model guidelines.” (Read the background here.)
“Thankfully absent” from the guidelines the California board will vote on today, according to Steve Robinson, MD, are provisions that would allow only a patient’s primary physician to approve their use of cannabis; create a registry of cannabis-using patients; require that a patient be seen in person before an initial approval is issued; make cannabis a treatment of last resort (after the pharmaceuticals have failed); and trigger investigations of physicians based on number of approvals issued.
Robinson is concerned that a “Decision Tree” developed by the CMCR as an attachment to the MBC guidelines could yet make cannabis a treatment of last resort. (See graphic…
