I first began recommending cannabis regularly in 2004. That year, a federal District Court decision (Conant vs. Walters) upheld an appeal allowing physicians the freedom to recommend cannabis as medical treatment.1 We could recommend cannabis use to patients as long as we performed a good faith evaluation and didn’t “aid and abet” in the still illegal procurement of cannabis. An occasional patient would request cannabis to relieve pain, nausea, or the side effects of prescription medication. The process was not foreign to me. Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, had made medical cannabis recommendations a possibility as early as 1996. The occasional request was a refreshing change to patient desires for opiates or benzodiazepenes. To prescribe cannabis, our hospital had a form letter that simply required my signature and date.
