A former Surgeon General of the United States of America says he wants to sell medical marijuana.
Among the list of applicants for Hawaii’s new medical marijuana dispensary system is a team of business professional including former Surgeon General, Kenneth Moritsugu. He’s not the only former top doc of the nation to support the medicinal use of one of mankind’s oldest cultivated plant species.
Former Surgeon General under President Bill Clinton, Dr. Joycelyn Elders, gave a keynote speech at the recent International Cannabis Business Conference in San Francisco on February 15. Dr. Elders was dismissed by Clinton in 1994 after disclosing her opinion that marijuana has medicinal uses.
In advance of the Conference, Dr. Elders told the San Francisco Chronicle that, “With legalization, we would stop using our poor to subsidize private prison industries.”
Even the current Surgeon General supports change in marijuana laws. ”We have some preliminary data showing that for certain medical conditions and symptoms that marijuana can be helpful,” Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told “CBS This Morning” on Feb. 3, 2015.
“So I think we have to use that data to drive policymaking, and I’m very interested to see where that data takes us,” he added.
Dr. Viek is not sitting still on the issue. On New Year’s Eve, Dec. 31, 2015, the Federal Register reported a notice from the Department of Health and Human Services: the Surgeon General is embarking on a project to analyze “the state of the science on substance use, addiction, and health.” The Surgeon General’s Report will “examine the health effects of drug and alcohol misuse from the perspectives of prevention, treatment, recovery, neurobiology, and delivery of care.”
It’s not just famous surgeons that advocate for marijuana law reform, either.
The California Cannabis Research Medical Group has spawned two important international voices for medicinal cannabis use.
The Society of Cannabis Clinicians (SCC) is a 501c3 non-profit organization dedicated to educating physicians about the medical use of cannabis. Its mission is to unite into one association members of the various medical specialties and allied professionals with this common purpose, according to the group’s Wiki page.
The group was established in 2004 by Tod Mikuriya, MD as a project of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group to facilitate voluntary medical standards for physician-approved cannabis under California law (HSC §11362.5).
SCC publishes their research findings in the Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice, O’Shaughnessy’s. Their online presence, www.beyondthc.com/, contains searchable articles on medical research and analysis of the current national attitude toward cannabis law reform.
In 2015, SCC launched the first online Medical Cannabis Continuing Education program. The program consists of a series of 12 courses designed to take a practicing clinician from the basics of the plant, its history and the underlying physiologic (endocannabinoid) system to the pharmacology and clinical practice of medical cannabis.
Other groups angling for a Hawaiian dispensary license list as members famed actor and cannabis consumer Woody Harrelson; a retired two-star Admiral in the U.S. Navy; the man who developed the video game Tetris, Henk Roberts; and television producer Dirk Fukushima.
For more intriguing quotes on the medicinal qualities of marijuana, visit “GENERAL QUOTES ON MEDICAL USE OF CANNABIS AND PROHIBITION” from medicalcannabisreports.com
Source: The Compassion Chronicles
