Internists Endorse Access to Medical Marijuana

In a new position paper, the American College of Physicians (ACP) "urges review of marijuana's status as a schedule I controlled substance and its reclassification into a more appropriate schedule, given the scientific evidence regarding marijuana's safety and efficacy in some clinical conditions." It also "strongly urges protection from criminal or civil penalties for patients who use medical marijuana as permitted under state laws." The ACP, which represents 124,000 internal medicine specialists and publishes Annals of Internal Medicine, is the second largest physician group in the country. (The American Medical Association claims about 244,000 members, of which some 135,000 are practicing physicians, according to MedPage Today.) The Marijuana Policy Project calls the ACP's position "the most significant organizational endorsement of medical marijuana access in the field of medicine and science."

I discussed such endorsements in November, when the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association unanimously urged the federal government to stop interfering with the medical use of marijuana in states where it's legal.