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Interesting article about the state of physician participation in the just launching Utah Medical Cannabis program covering many things doctors are trying to put into perspective.
It's a shame that the medical establishment has for many decades bought into prohibitionist propaganda as medicine has become more and more almost an appendage to the vast synthetic drug manufacturing/distribution industry often called, and not without reason, "big pharma," and which model of medicine is fully supported by entrenched and powerful bureaucracies in the federal government, e.g., as manifested in the FDA, the NIDA, DEA, etc. and so forth which have been highly resistant to evidence, common sense and which have turned a blind eye to the human suffering caused by so many aspects of federal drug law.
Bringing medicine up to speed on ethno-botanical medicine – which is is many ways quite fundamentally different than "take two of these a day and please don't call me unless it's an emergency" medicine – is going to be a longitudinal process over years – in the whole country and in the states with the most lingering cannaphobia like Utah in particular.
So we're glad to see doctors with open minds who are ready to move on.
However, also entirely not mentioned in the article are the reasonable concerns Utah physicians have about how the Utah compromise law may compromise the legal buffer which much more fully protects the DEA prescribing privileges of doctors. We've covered this in several posts, but briefly, the medically nonsensical fixation on the Utah program deciding what forms and amounts patients get – as opposed to most programs where approved patients can choose for themselves among all dispensary offerings – forces doctors to veer much closer to a federally prohibited prescription than doctors in other states who simply certify they feel patients could benefit from access to cannabis medicine.
And if the doctors defer that "near prescription," it will fall to the pharmacists to make the decisions – something they are absolutely not trained to do – and with patients they haven't worked up (and aren't trained to work up). How is this "more medical" in any desirable way than say, Colorado's system?
The Utah program also makes doctors actively involved in enrolling patients in the program in a way other states don't. There is NO reason for any procedure which puts physicians at risk with no tangible benefit to anyone that we can see.
Now this doesn't mean the federal government WILL act against Utah doctors, but if the truce between the the feds and the states ever frays, the most exposed doctors would be the easiest federal targets. A legal analysis done for us showed that case law supports our position on this.
Anyway, with those additions of perspective, an article worth digging into.
Some Utah Doctors Have Lingering Questions About State Medical Cannabis Program
Utah’s medical cannabis program is set to launch this weekend, with patients able to apply for a medical marijuana card online as early as Sunday morning.
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