You are in Medical

Marijuana as Medicine - A Plea for Reconsideration, is a commentary article written by Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar, which appeared in the June 21st 1995 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The Medicinal Use of Marijuana is a special topic article, written by nurse Mary Mathre, that appeared in the June '93 issue of Perspectives on Addictions Nursing.

Judge Young's ruling (Docket 86-22)
The US Drug Enforcement Agency held hearings in 1987 to determine whether cannabis should be allowed as medicine. After 1000's of hours of legal deliberations, the judge in charge accepted that cannabis is "capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people" and that it would be safe to use cannabis as a medicine under medical supervision. He recommended that the DEA should allow cannabis as a medicine, but its Administrator refused. The full text of Judge Youngs ruling is online ... the testimony of doctors, nurses and patients makes astonishing reading.

Ian Goddard is writing Medical Reality Versus Authoritarian Brutality which exposes the lies of US federal bureaucrats who claim that cannabis is harmful with no recognised medical use. The full text will be availiable soon.

• The History of Cannabis. This chapter from Dr. Lester Grinspoon and James Bakalar's 1993 book Marihuana: The Forbidden Medicine provides an excellent historical overview to the medical possibilities and political obstacles to medicinal marijuana.
• Club Medicine, by Jim Christie for the April, 1996 issue of Reason, explores the pheonomenon of marijuana "buyers clubs."
• Out of Joint: The Case for Medicinal Marijuana by Brian Hecht for the July 15, 1991 New Republic.
• Therapeutic Potential and Medical Uses of Marijuana. A brief overview of the many potential medicinal uses of marijuana, by Tod Mikuriya.
• The Medical Marijuana Issue Among PWAs: Reports of Therapeutic Use and Attitudes Toward Legal Reform. A June, 1996 report by Ben Wesner of the Drug Research Unit, Social Science Research Institute, University of Hawaii at Minoa.

The Erowid medicinal marijuana vault contains a lot of information, albiet with a US bias. It contains some history of medical usage, and several articles from the media.

The Science of Medical Marijuana is sponsored by Americans for Medical Rights, and carries several interesting and important reports and studies.

The Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics was the first non-profit organisation dedicated to reforming the laws which prohibit medical access to marijuana.

The International Association for Cannabis as Medicine (IACM) is 'a scientific society advocating the improvement of the legal situation for the use of the hemp plant and its pharmacologically most important active compounds, the cannabinoids, for therapeutic applications through promotion of research and dissemination of information.' They are a membership based organisation, but their website has a lot of information, and you can sign up for a free bi-weekly bulletin to keep up to date with the latest medical research news.