Medical marijuana was legalized in Rhode Island in January 2006, and by May 2022 even recreational sales became legal through state-licensed dispensaries and authorized retailers. Yet it still isn’t safe for medical users to come out of the closet. When it comes to both work regulations and social perception, patients who use cannabis as carefully as prescription medication are often still seen as, and treated like, stoners and street drug users.
Public opinion among hardliners has been slow to change because there is very little written on the medical use of marijuana. Research on the potential dangers of excessive recreational use have gotten much recent press, but little news gets out about scientific research that Harvard Medical School and affiliated institutions have launched to study the endocannabinoid system and therapeutic applications of cannabis. Official studies have been limited due to the classification of marijuana as a schedule one drug, so most of what the public knows stems from the observed behavior of recreational users.
When state legalization was rolled out, the main governmental goal was to raise cash from taxes and revenue surcharges; the concern of every dispensary was to increase their customer base. Very little thought was given to educating the public on cannabis products, which probably explains the sudden rash of teenagers overdosing on edibles.
Cannabis may have become a far more acceptable part of our culture, but the medical applications are no better understood by the general public than they were twenty years ago.
Licensed patients need to hide that fact for legal reasons when applying to any federal job, and being honest will push job applicants to the bottom of any hiring list due to the perception that they are spacy and less responsible.
I had to explain the validity of medical marijuana to my own sister, who is an alcoholic and has been a member of AA for over 50 years. In her opinion, medical users are no different than street drug users. She believes that anyone who says they are using pot on a purely medical level is just kidding themselves, and they are addicts, the same as anyone else who habitually uses drugs. But there are some very important differences, and if you are wondering whether your own use of marijuana is casual or bordering on addiction, you may want to take note.
• Medical users don’t walk around stoned. The goal for a medical patient is to treat symptoms in order to stay functional, not to get high. They very seldom increase dosage; in fact, patients who once randomly self-medicated with street-sourced supplies found that they were able to drastically decrease the amount they used once they understood how the various compounds in cannabis worked.
But the whole point of recreational drugs, both chemical and herbal, is to get high. Because their systems develop tolerances, addicts need to continually increase the amount of drugs that they use to get the same high. This is true for recreational marijuana as well. To get high over and over, you are either going to have to increase the amount that you use or wait for longer periods of time in between uses, so that your tolerance is lower.
• Every drug addict becomes a professional liar, keeping their habit secret from everyone except for their dealers and fellow users. That secret is one of the most damaging aspects of drug addiction. There are no secrets in the medical marijuana program. You don’t need to lie to your doctors, and you shouldn’t need to lie to your boss. If you’re smoking so much pot that you keep the amount a secret, then even if you’re medical, you’re smoking too much.
• Aside from the fact that keeping drug use secret is toxic and isolating on a social and personal level, even casual substance use can be deadly when it comes to interactions with other drugs. Medical patients who are open with all of their doctors can be protected from interactions with prescription medications. Cannabis may be an herb, but it is processed by the same liver enzymes as prescription drugs, and it can dangerously increase or reduce the effectiveness of over 500 medications.
• A medical marijuana patient does not have to get drugs from illegal sources without having any idea what they really contain. Part of the hazard of unlicensed drugs is that they often contain dangerous additives. Medical marijuana is sold at regulated dispensaries, and every product sold includes detailed ingredient information and production dates. Cannabis contains a complex mix of active compounds, each with a different application, and these are all listed so that patients can target specific conditions.
There are still those who see marijuana as a gateway drug and a dangerous addictive substance. Then, there are those who see marijuana as the great panacea to everything that ails mankind. The truth lies somewhere in between, but one thing remains clear – marijuana is a drug with powerful potential. It can either benefit us, or just get in our way. The choice is yours, so make it an educated one.
A good online source for evidence-based articles is Harvard Health’s dedicated topic page, health.harvard.edu/topics/marijuana-cbd/all