VA Allows Medical Marijuana for Pain

July 2, 2009 - The Veterans Administration will ignore marijuana drug screening for pain patients who have legal medical marijuana recommendations, under a new policy reported by VA Watchdog.

This is an important development, as NORML has received a flood of recent complaints from medical marijuana patients who have been denied treatment by pain clinics after testing positive for marijuana. Included have been MMJ patients who were receiving opiates from the same clinic for many years, but were suddenly drug tested and told that they must either give up MJ or lose their opiate prescriptions.

The upsurge in such incidents has been due to growing pressure on pain clinics to crack down on prescription opiate abuse and diversion by more intensive drug screening of patients. Although the opiate abuse problem has nothing to do with marijuana, and there is no legal
requirement that clinics test for cannabinoids, many have been doing so anyway under the mistaken impression that they might be prosecuted for prescribing opiates to MMJ users. To our knowledge, not a single such prosecution has ever occurred.

On the contrary, recent studies show that cannabis is valuable for treating chronic pain, and in particular can be an effective adjunct to opiate therapy, reducing the need for opiates and other prescription drugs. There is accordingly no sound basis either medically or legally for denying treatment to chronic pain patients who test positive for medical marijuana. Hopefully, the new VA policy will help stem this perverse and misguided practice.

- D. Gieringer, Cal NORML

California NORML recently investigated reports from patients who are being drug-tested by their pain doctors, including attending The 2009 American Pain Society Convention in San Diego. In a report for the journal O'Shaughnessy's, CaNORML concludes: "The prejudice against marijuana has nothing to do with medical science, but rather with political and legal pressures to crack down on prescription drug use."