The Appropriate Physician Approach to Medical Marijuana

How will the growing acceptance of medical marijuana among the public, and in state laws, affect physician behavior?

In a recent Practice Notes blog, Physicians Practice associate editor Marisa Torrieri examined this question. “While some states are liberalizing their laws on marijuana, that doesn’t settle the questions that clinicians have about whether recommending it is the right or wrong thing to do,” she wrote.

Family medicine physician Robert Brockmann shared his thoughts. “There’s a pretty good debate about whether medical marijuana helps or causes more problems,” he told Torrieri. “We know that it helps for things like chemotherapy and nausea, but does it really help for chronic back pain? Does it do anything other than getting them high?”

What do you think is the appropriate approach to medical marijuana? Should physicians recommend it? Should they oppose it? Does it depend on the circumstances? If legal barriers to medical marijuana were eliminated in your state, would you recommend it to patients?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below. Your response might help other physicians deal with this issue.

Facing a dilemma in practice? E-mail it to Aubrey.Westgate@ubm.com. We’ll share it without revealing your name, and we will ask other physician readers to weigh in.