Little medical scrutiny in medical pot screenings

Even before the state’s medical marijuana law is fully implemented, some legislators are talking about making marijuana legally available to all adults for recreational use.

In practice, the medical pot law already makes it possible for just about anybody to legally obtain pakalolo for whatever use they wish if they’re willing to invest $200 a year for a brief health consult and $38.50 for the state’s annual card processing fee.

Medical marijuana was originally intended to help patients with severe diagnoses such as cancer, lupus, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma and rheumatoid arthritis.

But legislators threw it wide open by also allowing prescriptions for general conditions such as pain, nausea and muscle spasms — symptoms anybody can say they have and it’s difficult to prove otherwise.

Many doctors decline to prescribe marijuana because they doubt its medical efficacy, don’t have time for the paperwork or worry that weed remains illegal under federal law.

Legislators circumvented this by allowing pot prescriptions by nurse practitioners, who have advanced training and already were able to prescribe certain drugs including psychoactives such as benzodiazepines.

Some have established practices built around marijuana prescriptions.

My primary care doctor doesn’t prescribe marijuana, so I went to a nurse practitioner to see if it would be advisable for my multiple sclerosis.

It was a 20-minute appointment for $200 with a promise that I wouldn’t pay if I wasn’t deemed qualified.

I took medical records to prove I had MS, but they weren’t necessary. “If you said you had a sore throat, we’d take your word for it,” she said. “Why should this be different?”

She asked about my symptoms and was more thorough than a doctor likely would have been in explaining how they’d be affected by different strains of marijuana. She suggested a strain for stimulation during the day and another for relaxation at night.

Despite coming of age in the ’60s, I’ve had little experience with marijuana and she was helpful in explaining the different means of ingestion — smoking, eating and vaping — and the gadgets required.

I provided a list of my medications, but there was no discussion of possible interactions; I’d probably discuss this with my doctor before actually using pot.

She qualified me on pain and muscle spasms rather than the MS itself, filling out the state’s online form as we spoke.

The professionals I encountered took their roles seriously, but the system doesn’t require the medical scrutiny I’d have gotten for a similarly potent traditional drug prescription.

It left me questioning the energy and resources put into a screening process that’s more bureaucratic than therapeutic.

If legislators intend for marijuana to be available to all, why not drop the medical fig leaf, follow Colorado and California in legalizing it for general use, and reap the tax bounty?

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.