HTTP/1.0 200 OK Content-Type: text/html Study Gives Hard Data on Users of Medical Pot
Pubdate: Sun, 21 Aug 2011
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2011 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Paul Armentano
Note: Paul Armentano, who lives in Vallejo, is the deputy director of
theNational Organization for the Reformof Marijuana Laws in
Washington, D.C.He is the co-author of the book "Marijuana Is Safer:
So WhyAreWe Driving People to Drink?"
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal)

STUDY GIVES HARD DATA ON USERS OF MEDICAL POT

Nearly 16 years have passed since California voters enacted 
Proposition 215, which allows for the use of marijuana when 
recommended by a physician. Yet during this time, surprisingly little 
demographic data has been collected on the growing number of 
Californians consuming cannabis as a state-authorized medicine. 
Predictably, this dearth of data has fueled allegations from 
Proposition 215 critics that few Californians using cannabis are 
doing so for "legitimate" medical purposes. Advocates of the law 
similarly rely on anecdotal evidence to enforce the notion that the 
law is working largely as voters intended and is seldom abused.

A newly published study by researchers at the University of 
California, Santa Cruz, for the first time offers a statewide 
empirical analysis of the population characteristics of California's 
medical marijuana community. And while the study is unlikely to put 
an end this contentious debate, it does provide some needed and 
long-overdue clarity.

The authors analyzed data from 1,746 consecutive admissions to nine 
medical marijuana assessment clinics operating throughout California. 
Among the researchers' findings:

Three-fourths of the patients sampled were male and three-fifths were 
Caucasian. Compared with census data for California, the patients in 
this sample were on average "somewhat younger, reported slightly more 
years of formal education, and (were) more often employed."

Authorized patients were most likely to be between the ages of 25 and 
34 (27.5 percent), followed by those between the ages of 35 to 44 
(21.3 percent) and 45 to 54 (20.4 percent).

The most common reasons patients cited for using medical marijuana 
were the relief of pain, spasms, headache and anxiety, as well as to 
improve sleep and relaxation.

Patients typically reported that cannabis provided them with more 
than one therapeutic benefit, and four in five (79.3 percent) 
reported having first tried other medications prescribed by their 
physicians, almost half of which were opiates.

A majority of the population assessed (56.1 percent) said they used 
cannabis prior to sleep.

Most (40.1 percent) of patients assessed used only moderate amounts 
of cannabis (up to 3 grams per week). Thirty-six percent of patients 
reported using 4 to 7 grams of cannabis, and 23.3 percent said they 
consumed more than 7 grams of marijuana per week.

Patients' use of tobacco was "somewhat higher than in the general 
population, but (their) prevalence of alcohol use was significantly 
lower" than that of the general population. Their use of other 
illicit substances, including cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin was 
also lower than that of the general population.

Authors of the study, which appears in The Journal of Psychoactive 
Drugs, said that their findings affirmed that California's medical 
marijuana patient community is evolving. "Compared to earlier studies 
of medical marijuana patients, these data suggest that the patient 
population has evolved from mostly HIV/AIDS and cancer patients to a 
significantly more diverse array," they concluded. "This suggests 
that the patient population is likely to continue evolving as new 
patients and physicians discover the therapeutic uses of cannabis."

What impact, if any, this evolution will have on the ongoing 
political debate over the legalization of marijuana as a medicine in 
California and elsewhere remains to be seen. But at a minimum these 
findings should provide a rebuttal to some of the more pervasive 
stereotypes and specious claims surrounding who in the Golden State 
uses medical cannabis and why.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these findings ought to 
reinforce California voters' continued support for patients' 
continued legal access to medical marijuana 16 years after the 
passage of the nation's inaugural cannabis legalization law.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom