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Comment & Response
November 12, 2014

Medicalization of Marijuana—Reply

Author Affiliations
  • 1Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut
JAMA. 2014;312(18):1931-1932. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.12569

In Reply We think Dr Reiman and colleagues have misunderstood and misrepresented our position. We did not suggest that cannabis should not be allowed for medical use. Instead, we stated that specific constituents of marijuana may have therapeutic promise for certain symptoms or diseases, such as neuropathic pain.

However, for a number of conditions for which it is now approved, such as posttraumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer disease, and Parkinson disease, there are no clinical trials evaluating efficacy. Furthermore, in some instances (eg, posttraumatic stress disorder), some data suggest that marijuana use is associated with worse outcomes.1

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