Medical marijuana will be available in the District of Columbia starting at some point in 2011, under tight restrictions. In August, Mayor Adrian Fenty’s administration issued a detailed set of rules, which will be taken up by the D.C. Council this fall.
At the time, Fenty said, “All District residents deserve access to the full slate of medical treatments available. My administration will work to ensure that medical marijuana is dispensed safely and efficiently.”
The rules call for the creation of five dispensaries, where marijuana will actually be obtained, and 10 cultivation centers, where the plants will be grown. The dispensary sites have not been chosen yet, but there has been talk of Adams Morgan, Georgetown, Petworth, and Takoma Park, among other places.
The D.C. law permits physicians to recommend marijuana for patients with cancer, glaucoma, and other conditions that cannot be treated effectively by other means. It also permits the prescription of marijuana for HIV/AIDS -- but one doctor who treats patients with HIV thinks that’s a bad idea.
“Medical marijuana, although a popular concept among patients and activists, has not been shown in clinical trials to be beneficial for those infected with HIV,” says Andy Catanzaro, an infectious diseases physician practicing in the District. “It may benefit other patients, but in my practice there are none infected with HIV who would derive benefit from using marijuana.”
Catanzaro says that when the District first voted on medical marijuana in 1998, “effective treatments for HIV were just beginning to be widely used by those of us in practice. Patients were dying, wasting away from the disease and needed measures to end their lives in comfort.”
But in 2010, he says, “we are blessed to have dozens of options to treat HIV. Thanks to careful and deliberate research on these medications, very few patients die from AIDS.”
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2 comments:
Totally legalise it and tax it. Far less harmful than alcohol.
I'd rather the gov't not be able to tax it. Why give them more of our money to spend in ways we don't deem necessary/proper? It's too out in the open to simply attempt to regulate it, and sell it through traditional commercial channels. Legalize it and be done with it.
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