Project SAM Urges Caution Regarding Gov. Christie’s Ruling on Marijuana as Medicine for Children
August 17, 2013 – Project SAM (Smart Approaches to Marijuana), a national alliance of health professionals and policymakers, co-chaired by former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, Jr. and former Obama and Bush advisor Dr. Kevin A. Sabet, urges New Jersey lawmakers to adopt the following safeguards if marijuana and drugs derived from cannabis – substances that have not received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – are to be allowed for children with debilitating diseases:
- Marijuana should not be allowed in smoked or vaporized forms.
- Only strains containing high CBD and little to no THC should be allowed.
- Physicians who recommend for children non-FDA-approved substances derived from cannabis should be required to have professional licensure in pediatrics or a pediatrics sub-specialty, and/or child psychiatry, and specific training on marijuana.
- Only physicians in good standing should be allowed to recommend marijuana for medical purposes.
Project SAM also calls on the FDA for swift, responsible leadership that both helps desperate parents and desperate states and upholds the integrity of our nation’s rigorous process of medication development.
“States are stuck between a rock and a hard place dealing with marijuana as medicine,” Dr. Sabet said. “We must rapidly expand research in this area because we are now making decisions with potentially grave consequences for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens.”
Project SAM promotes the research of cannabis’ components and medical properties to produce medications that qualified physicians can legally prescribe and people can attain from reputable, licensed pharmacies.
Added Dr. Christian Thurstone, a board-certified child and addictions psychiatrist in Denver who serves as medical director of Colorado’s largest adolescent substance-abuse-treatment program:
“States should not bypass responsible research and FDA approval. At the same time, the FDA should move much more aggressively and quickly to speed research of cannabis-based substances; expedite access to promising, new, non-smoked, non-intoxicating, cannabis-derived medications, such as Sativex; and educate the public about the dangers of allowing people — especially children — to ingest these substances.
“The longer the FDA waits to address this very serious issue of child healthcare, the more children it puts at risk.”
Project SAM, funded through volunteers, focuses on four main goals:
(1) To inform public policy with the science of today’s marijuana
(2) To have an adult conversation about reducing the unintended consequences of current marijuana policies, such as lifelong stigma due to arrest
(3) To prevent the establishment of “Big Marijuana” — and a 21st-Century tobacco industry that would market marijuana to children. Those are the very likely results of legalization
(4) To promote research of marijuana’s medical properties and produce pharmacy-attainable medications
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