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WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a unanimous vote, the Assembly of the American Psychiatric Association has approved a strongly worded statement supporting legal protection for patients using medical marijuana with their doctor's recommendation.

The APA action paper, which must be approved by the APA Board of Trustees when it meets in December, notes that 12 states now have medical marijuana laws, and states, "The threat of arrest by federal agents, however, still exists. Seriously ill patients living in these states with medical marijuana recommendations from their doctors should not be subjected to the threat of punitive federal prosecution for merely attempting to alleviate the chronic pain, side effects, or symptoms associated with their conditions or resulting from their overall treatment regimens. ... [We] support protection for patients and physicians participating in state approved medical marijuana programs."

This and a second action paper calling on the government to facilitate "well-designed clinical research into the medical utility of marijuana" were adopted Saturday with no dissenting votes by the APA Assembly, which represents the group's 74 district branches and 16 allied professional organizations.

"This vote is a landmark, and a proud day for our profession." said Abraham L. Halpern, M.D., professor emeritus of psychiatry at New York Medical College and past president of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. "As physicians, we cannot abide our patients being subject to arrest and jail for using a physician-recommended treatment that clearly relieves suffering for many who are not helped by conventional treatments."

"This unanimous vote shows the growing acceptance of medical marijuana by organized medicine," said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C. "Members of Congress who have opposed efforts to protect patients from federal prosecution have tried to portray medical marijuana as a fringe issue. But the APA Assembly vote, along with other recent endorsements including the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, shows that it's those who want to arrest the sick and suffering who are on the fringe."

With 40,000 members and 16 allied organizations (including the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, American Association for Social Psychiatry, American Academy of Addiction Psychiatry, and the American Association of Emergency Psychiatrists), the American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization for psychiatrists in the United States.

What the MPP Alert does not say, is that this is the culmination of a long campaign by MMPAP and other drug policy reform organizations to educate physicians on the importance of their taking a strong position on the protection of medicinal cannabis patients from Federal arrest and prosecution. I think the key factors in Abraham Halpern’s success with the APA Assembly included his very long history of working within the APA Assembly on a number of important medical ethics issues, as well as the recognition by some of the more vocal opponents of medicinal cannabis that this was essentially a STATES RIGHTS issue. In any case, both of the Action Papers that were passed last week are still subject to review and possible amendment by the APA’s Board of Trustees at next month’s meeting.

In terms of the research Action Paper (also attached), it is basically a restatement of existing APA policy on medicinal cannabis research that re-emphasizes the importance of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) providing pharmaceutical research grade cannabis to ALL FDA-approved research projects, whether or not NIDA actually funds those research projects. This would be an alternative way for pharmaceutical companies or foundation sponsored medicinal cannabis researchers to proceed in an expeditious manner, as NIDA currently does not provide such materials to researchers who are not conducting NIDA-funded projects. However, MMPAP is still working with Rick Doblin of MAPS to encourage the DEA to license other “private” sources of pharmaceutical grade cannabis production, so that researchers are not limited to the relatively unstandardized and largely freeze dried stores of whole cannabis that are produced by the only currently licensed facility in the US. This material, grown at the University of Mississippi, is thus not usable by drug companies that require an adequate supply of standardized pharmaceutical-grade cannabis to complete FDA-approved trials that may eventually lead to FDA approval of whole cannabis as a therapeutic agent for specific uses. It has been, however, suitable for use in a number of recent NIDA-funded studies that have demonstrated the effectiveness of whole smoked cannabis in ameliorating chronic pain conditions, such as HIV-related peripheral neuropathy and cancer pain.

While much more work has to be done to educate physicians and other healthcare providers about the therapeutic potential of medicinal cannabis, both MMPAP and the patients that our SAB represent owe a great deal to Dr. Halpern’s unflagging efforts to achieve what many have called a “miracle” outcome at this past week’s APA Assembly meeting. Let us hope that the APA Board of Trustees agrees with the APA Assembly, and that their delegation to the AMA House of Delegates brings these resolutions before the AMA HOD and strongly campaigns for their adoption there.

At the same time, MMPAP will continue its efforts to educate primary caregivers and organized medicine’s leadership on the facts about medicinal cannabis. I will be presenting on the challenges we face in terms of both changing the attitudes of physicians towards medicinal cannabis and the challenges of working within organized medicine to achieve that goal at two upcoming Conferences. The first will take place on Friday, December 7th at the Drug Policy Conference in New Orleans. The next scheduled major presentation will be at the Asilomar, CA “Patients Out of Time” Conference in early April of 2008. More details about these and other exciting developments involving MMPAP will be included in a “Progress Report” document that is currently being written and should go out to all SAB members and other supporters of our goals by the end of this month.

American Psychiatric Association Assembly Backs Medical Marijuana Patient Protection