Medical marijuana is said to relieve anxiety, alleviate pain, prevent epileptic seizures and increase appetite for some patients, but many Colorado family physicians lean against recommending the drug.
Forty-six percent of Colorado family physicians say they do not support doctors recommending medical marijuana. Nearly all of them cite a lack of information about the drug.
These were among the findings of a study published in February in The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Researchers Elin Kondrad, a family physician, and Alfred Reid sent an online survey to 1,727 members of the Colorado Academy of Family Physicians in 2011 and received 520 responses. The survey asked the physicians about their attitudes toward medical marijuana.
Nineteen percent of the physicians who responded said doctors should recommend medical marijuana to patients. Thirty-five percent said they needed more information or were undecided.
“I don’t think physicians have a bias against marijuana,” said Robert Brockmann, president of the academy. “I think there is a bias against lack of information.”
– Read the entire article at Denver Post.
