JULIETTE KAYYEM’S Dec. 12 column on medicinal marijuana (“The government’s marijuana problem,’’ Op-ed) misses the boat. Reclassifying marijuana would not allow doctors to prescribe the drug, nor make it OK for pharmacists to dispense it. The US Food and Drug Administration requires drugs to go through a rigorous safety and efficacy approval process before allowing them to be prescribed.
Moreover, marijuana-derived medications, such as Marinol and Cesamet, have been reclassified, and are available by prescription. Recently, the FDA ruled that raw marijuana does not meet its general standards. The drug failed an eight-factor scientific analysis that examined hundreds of studies on the plant’s health effects. The National Academies of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine determined “there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication.’’
