Doctors Against Medical Cannabis - Eurad

The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) states that doctors may violate The Hippocratic Oath if they prescribe medical marijuana to their patients Prescribing an untested drug violates their ethical oath to “do no harm”.

In the written statement The Role of the Physician in ‘Medical Marijuana’ , the ASAM – a professional society of physicians involved in addiction prevention, treatment, research, education, and public policy – called for an end to public vote approval of marijuana as medicine at the state level, recommending that marijuana be subject to federal testing and regulation. 

 – Marijuana is not medication as it is not FDA- approved.

– Our policy statement is a careful attempt to put marijuana into proper perspective. We do not recognize this as a ‘medication,’ having not gone through an official FDA-approval process. As experts in addiction medicine, we reject having its use foisted upon us to effectively regulate a non-FDA-approved substance to administer as medicine, said Dr. Louis E. Baxter, Sr., ASAM’s president.

Dr. Andrea G. Barthwell, former President of ASAM has said that state approval of medical marijuana put ”physicians in an untenable position as gatekeepers to a controlled substance still deemed illicit by the federal government."

ASAM argues that marijuana is problematic because it is addictive; when smoked it can deposit up to four times the amount of tar in the lungs as cigarettes. They also believe that as production is not standardized, there can be no reliable dosing, but their main argument isthat  marijuana has not been tested as a medical drug.