Marijuana Preferred Over Doctors' Prescriptions, Says California Survey

• Berkeley Patients Group did a very useful study on 350 medical marijuana users.  For one thing, it showed that marijuana is a "reverse gateway" that helps people away from alcohol cravings, prescription drugs, and other, more dangerous illegal drugs. Marijuana has a safety profile that is the envy of any currently accepted pharmaceutical anti-psychotic or anxiolytic.  Given that, it's a wonder that marijuana is not the first drug tried for psychiatric disorders, instead of the last.

• You nailed it, Dennis Romero.  You are absolutely correct that millions of people trust a natural plant over toxic and solvent-laden pills that do Lord knows what to our bodies ranging from constipation to addiction to death.I must say though that you appear to have missed the conflict of interest between the "well-trained" doctors promoting pharma products.  Of course docs have a stake in the pills market over a people-controlled plant.Your omission is a bit glaring, the options for it range from corruption to cluelessness. 

• dennis romero is a douche. Congratulations on continuing to support journalists that are helping to bring LA Times to a close.  

• The difference is that in the eyes of the government and the law, marijuana and prescription drugs are categorically separated in several ways. One of those separations happens to be the lack of FDA approval on marijuana. As I understand it, doctors here in the United States are barred from prescribing non-FDA-approved drugs, thus medical doctors must "recommend" marijuana to their patients. It seems to me that the terms are probably defined separately by the law. I suspect this plays a very important role in matters of insurance especially. Next time, instead of being a wise guy, why not look up the difference yourself?

• Yeah well I am a prop 215 patient prescribed morphine for osteoarthritis and effexor for anti anxiety. Both meds together zapped my energy and made me sick. Now by using the correct strains of medimar, I'm feeling better than I have for months. Don't tell me it isn't medically beneficial.

• Well duh, Mary J is just cool like that. net-privacy.us.tc

• Hey neat, it's been a while since I've read a high school newspaper.

• Esse cara eh um bosta. Hipócrita do caralho. A tecnologia eh democrática demais: qualquer imbecil consegue expor ideias através de um site desses. 

• This article makes me sick, with the condescending tone of it all you were think you were on of the attorney generals who is trying to strip us of safe access to our meds. I replaced a prescription for ambien with medical marijuana and I couldn't be happier; where as on ambien I would experience awful side-effects such as blacking out and doing things I didn't remember at all the next morning (retrograde amnesia like thus is common on ambien and other prescription sleep medications) as well as feeling groggy and I'll the next morning, NOT well-rested. Nowadays I medicate wIth medical marijuana to alleviate my insomnia and it works grade with virtually no side-effects (you don't have to smoke in order to medicate, theres other options.)' Does big pharma sponsor this web site as well?? I know they're already rallying behind our attorney generals in the state to eliminate this pesky drug that seeks to infringe on it's profits.

•  Aside from a matter of petty sophistry, the difference is...?

• I think they "recommend" it.

• It seems to me that the relationships between Dr. Reiman, the medical marijuana industry, and the policy surrounding it differ, on such a fundamental level as to be nearly opposite, from  those relationships shared between pharmaceutical companies, the prescription drug industry, and prescription drug policy. These relationships being what they are it seems to me that Dr. Reiman was simply reporting the figures from a survey of people who smoke quite often. That being the case, I'm lead to believe this article must have been written by either a computer program or a poorly trained chimpanzee.

• Big fail on the article, Dennis.  It is obvious by now that cannabis is a safe and effective substitute for dangerous and costly pharmaceuticals.  Sarcasm and tired rhetoric are uncalled for in a serious discussion.  Get a life.

• Let's all remember that Doctors PRESCRIBE medical marijuana to their patients. 

• So Dennis, why no mention of the FDA approved monkey on the backs of the patients who take the advice of those "well-trained physicians?" No comment on the FDA approved suicides committed by patients who took FDA approved anti-depressants on the the advice of those "well-trained physicians?" C'mon Dennis, Enquiring minds want to know! Oops, sorry, that's your day job. --------- Antidepressants & Suicide, FDA Warns The FDA has warned that children and adults taking antidepressants can become suicidal in the first weeks of therapy and that physicians should watch patients closely when first giving the drugs or changing dosages. The FDA is asking drug manufacturers to place explicit warnings about the drugs' side effects, including the risk of suicide, on their labels. ----------  

• Come on, this argument is ridiculous..... Do you want someone using vicodin, oxy, or some other drug or weed. Its really simple. Open your eyes, weed isn't harmful. 50% of Americans see this now, why can't you Dennis?

• I find it interesting that the Obama administration announced this last week that they intend to keep tossing kids in jail and turning them into hardened criminals because cannabis might not be good for them. Of course they don't like that it is 'smoked' .. smoking they say is a bad delivery system.. can't legalize the 'smoke'. Yet no one, or at least not very many if at all, have ever died from it. Alcohol kills people all the time, more than any other drug, legal and illegal combined (excluding tobacco), yet the President sure does like his 'beer summit' photo ops. My 9 yr old even clipped a picture of the President chugging a beer for his 'in the news' school project.  --- The whole thing is a lie.. an expensive and deadly live. We are destroying our country over something that is so obviously on the slow expensive road to failure anyway. Hemp/cannabis has been growing naturally in every state of the union since before any of them were even states. This isn't a product that is especially exotic or has to grow in a special climate.. it's a weed. A weed that thus far has cost us 2 trillion dollars, and incarcerated a great many millions of our own people who simply don't belong in a prison system.  In this same time, grass is easier to get than ever, more readily available than ever, cheaper than ever, better than ever and more socially acceptable than ever. One needn't be a rocket scientist to see how this is going to end anyway.. can we please please please stop the self imposed swath of destruction to ourselves over this almost childish issue in the mean time?

• Awesome! Well said sir,...Well said!!!

• Mr. Romero, speaking of bias, why don't you list some sources of research that supports your obvious anti-pot views? Perhaps data from DEA or FDA? Pot smokers love to debate any data provided by these agencies.  And since 'Well trained doctors' seem to be your basis of authority, how about the fact that over 35,000 doctors of the CMA voted unanimously to support legalizing pot? Did you not hear about that? Google is an excellent search engine, you might want to use it. Better still, why not tell us your experiences with pot and how much you know about it? Don't want to admit your ignorance? No problem, we can all see it clearly. Let me educate you just a little:  There are at least 25 million people in the US that smoke pot regularly every year. That number is pretty steady all the way back to 1978 and then back to 1968 it goes down to about 13 million. These millions of people have been smoking it regularly every year for the last 35 years. and there were approximately 1-2 million smoking it regularly every year in 1960, the year I was born, and for the previous 40 years before that. Remember, this is just in the US. These 25 million regular pot smokers are white, black, Asian, Hispanic, rich, poor, students, doctors, lawyers, scientists, athletes, cops, judges, housewives, gardeners, teachers, journalists, soldiers, politicians.....every kind of person from every background in every city and town and state in this country, And sadly, millions are in prison for non-violent pot crimes only and millions more will never be able to get a good job again because of the life long criminal record the get from a previous arrest for possession of pot. These millions upon millions of pot smokers have smoked it, eaten it, made juice out of it and drank it, grown it, classified it, cultured it, sold it and medicated with it. People have smoked it all their lives, for decades, they have smoked it all day long and in low and high doses. Hundreds of books document its use, its effects, its pleasures and its healing properties. Pot smokers have even tried, on purpose, to overdose on it. Guess what? Nothing happened. Its effects on our society have been so benign, that if it were not for the news, non-smokers would not even know it existed.  In fact, over the last 5,000 years, hundreds of millions have used it and performed every normal activity known to man and there were no significant harmful results and until the 1930's, there have been no complaints about it from anyone. Read about William Randolf Hearst and you'll see why pot is illegal.  Not even one person has ever died from acute marijuana poisoning. Today, you come in contact on average with at least one person a day high on pot or will be or has been within the last 24 hours. Where is the harm? Where is the catastrophe? Where is the crisis?  And you want us to believe that we have to wait for science to tell us it's not harmful? Or that it IS? Do you think they're going to discover that all those millions were in fact, harmed in some significant way?  Would you have us wait for the FDA or a large Pharmaceutical company to test it on 500, or 1000, or even 10,000 people to tell us what hundreds of millions already know?  Thanks for your article. Views such as yours make it so easy and even fun to respond to and readers can read your article, and then other readers responses and make their own decision. If you're really against this natural weed that grows almost everywhere, and don't want it legalized, the best thing you can do is not write about it but it's too late. We already know the truth.

• The sad truth is that cannabis is the single most researched plant in existence. Even more sad is that governments all over the world claim there is no research when the truth is exactly opposite. Personally I find it disgusting that doctors and scientists doing real research are completely discredited by doctors and politicians who havnt lifted a finger. To discredit the hard work of these people and write off research as 'anecdotal evidence' is nothing more than a superiority complex from scientifically stubborn people; because they didn't do the research themselves it must not exist. Sadly it appears ignorance is contagious..

• Love the irony Dennis..."well-trained physician" such as Dr. Conrad Murray?

• Article writer comes across as very bitter who doesn't want to believe that cannabis is helping people more than pharmaceutical drugs. Wake up mate and take your head out of your ass.

• Lets see now, Cannabis 0 deaths and insignificant side effects versus pharmaceutical drugs each with a large list of side effects 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications, the only bias I see is yours Dennis., 

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