Comments on: The National Review on Arnold and marijuana http://www.medrants.com/archives/1450 Contemplating medicine and the health care system Fri, 19 Mar 2010 21:47:40 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: John Anderson http://www.medrants.com/archives/1450/comment-page-1#comment-2386 John Anderson Wed, 10 Sep 2003 17:22:05 +0000 http://medrants.com/archives/2003/09/10/the-national-review-on-arnold-and-marijuana/#comment-2386 Changing the law, which was passed some time back and classes marijuana as "of no medical value" despite later developments such as marinol, might be very difficult politically, even to reclass it as a prescription drug. There would be a lot of messy fighting about how far to go, other drugs, etc. And then there is the "scientific" objection that dosage could not be pre-determined. But there may be a simpler way: if the FDA would cooperate, it could "legalize" prescriptions by calling government programs "research". Politicians whose constituents oppose any loosening could claim they object but cannot overrule the FDA, while those whose constituencies approve could say they support the FDA's research of what might be an important addition to the pharmacoepia. For what good it might do, I have mailed this as a suggestion to my federal reps. Changing the law, which was passed some time back and classes marijuana as “of no medical value” despite later developments such as marinol, might be very difficult politically, even to reclass it as a prescription drug. There would be a lot of messy fighting about how far to go, other drugs, etc. And then there is the “scientific” objection that dosage could not be pre-determined.

But there may be a simpler way: if the FDA would cooperate, it could “legalize” prescriptions by calling government programs “research”. Politicians whose constituents oppose any loosening could claim they object but cannot overrule the FDA, while those whose constituencies approve could say they support the FDA’s research of what might be an important addition to the pharmacoepia.

For what good it might do, I have mailed this as a suggestion to my federal reps.

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