See also: Marijuana: MMJ Patient Numbers Drop Slightly Despite High Rec Prices, Lawmakers' Fears
Number 5: There are many inherent problems with prescribing plants to treat a condition.Dr. Larry Wolk, director of the Colorado Department of Health, compared marijuana to foxglove in his opening remarks. As a physician, he noted, it isn't as easy to recommend that a patient with a heart condition grow foxglove at home and then prepare it for consumption in order to reap the effects of digitalis. Instead, physicians prescribe Digitalin, which contains a single chemical rather than the many that comprise a plant.
Number 4: However, many physicians believe that the marijuana plant has benefits that its extracted chemical components lack.Physicians who are willing to work with medical marijuana and its chemical components are not blind to the fact that many of their patients prefer the plant to other laboratory-created options, such as Marinol -- and many of them believe there is a valid medical reason for this preference. The presence of so many more chemicals in marijuana than in Marinol mean that those additional components are interacting in the body alongside the "active" components such as THC and CBD that are typically isolated.
Continue for more lessons learned during day one of the Marijuana for Medical Professionals Conference.
