Experts discuss use, research of medical marijuana

National experts who discussed the implications of medical marijuana agreed on a key point March 14 during the DeVos Medical Ethics Colloquy at the Cook-DeVos Center for Health Sciences.

Yasmin Hurd and Kevin Hill said more research is needed to study the long-term effects of the drug and better policies are needed to regulate medical marijuana.

Hurd is chair of neuroscience and director of the Center for Addictive Disorders at Mount Sinai Behavioral Health System in New York; she spoke about her research and the negative aspects of legalizing the drug for medicinal purposes. Hill, in favor of legalization, is the director of substance abuse consultation services at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts.

Medical marijuana is legal in 23 states. It is used to treat pain and discomfort from a nearly endless list of conditions, from writer’s cramp to Parkinson’s disease, Hurd said.

“If, indeed, marijuana can treat all these conditions, then it’s really a miracle drug,” she said.

Hurd said issues arise because long-term effects have not been widely studied and the drug impacts people so differently. Federal regulations on researchers studying medical marijuana are complicated, she added.

Hill said, nationally, the policy of regulating the drug has come before the science of studying it.

“People are voting it in, then trying to correct the policies later,” he said. “Problems arise when advocates are writing the laws.”

He advocated for physicians to prescribe marijuana use to treat debilitating conditions only, speaking against storefronts that quickly evaluate “patients.”

The DeVos Medical Ethics Colloquy is scheduled twice a year; Grand Valley became the host of the series in June, after receiving a gift from the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation.