USA. Ready to Join Organized Marijuana Medicine?
USA. Ready to Join Organized Marijuana Medicine?
There's a professional society for seemingly every kind of medical specialist, even cannabis clinicians.
Or medical marijuana physicians. Or pot doctors, in street parlance.
And just as there's a choice of what to call physicians who use the plant to treat everything from pain to multiple sclerosis, there's a choice of three different medical associations to represent them. Their emergence over the past 15 years coincides with the legalization of medical marijuana in 29 states and Washington, DC, and recreational marijuana in eight states and DC.
The three associations amount to friendly rivals that strive for professional respectability, which hasn't always attended their field. David Bearman, MD, a board member of the American Academy of Cannabinoid Medicine (AACM), castigates medical marijuana dispensaries that have hired bikini-clad young women to lure passersby inside for a quick visit with an on-site clinician.
"We wanted to marginalize those people," Dr Bearman told Medscape Medical News about the formation of his group.
The AACM, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians (SCC), and the American Medical Marijuana Physicians Association (AMMPA) all want to educate the public and the medical profession alike about marijuana and its therapeutic chemicals and see more research in this field. Despite strong headwinds from the federal government, one being an unsympathetic attorney general, they have high hopes for their work, which they say could become a bona fide medical specialty. (Medscape, 24.11.2017)