Excerpt
SUMMARY: It was an unprecedented meeting of the minds and it happened at Harvard Medical School. The subject of April's confab? Medical cannabis. Researchers suspect cannabis can do so many things, from fighting cancer to easing concussions and Crohn's disease. There are still tight restrictions but weed is increasingly coming into the scientific mainstream. Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.
MILES O'BRIEN, Science Correspondent: It's a landmark place, and time, on the long road to bring medicinal marijuana into the scientific mainstream.
The New England Treatment Access, or NETA, dispensary in Brookline, Massachusetts, is housed in a Beaux-Arts bank building built in the 1920s, a cathedral of cannabis.
Paul Breeden has been coming here to treat chronic pain since the dispensary opened in February.
PAUL BREEDEN (NETA client): I have been praying for this day all my life. I have been fighting for this day all my life. I'm a son of a minister. I believe God created marijuana. Humans don't know how God works.
MILES O'BRIEN: Look at that thing.
NETA is a nonprofit, serving about 7,000 medical marijuana customers now. The goal is to supply 10,000 on an ongoing basis. Besides dried flowers and buds that can be smoked, they offer pills, vapor cartridges, creams, tinctures, brownies, chocolates and lozenges.
PAUL BREEDEN: It's really part of sort of the normalization of medical cannabis. The days of Ziploc baggies are over.
MILES O'BRIEN: Norton Arbelaez is a NETA consultant who turned to medical marijuana after he contracted a staph infection 10 years ago.
NORTON ARBELAEZ, New England Treatment Access: I had quite a bit of pain. I was prescribed opiate painkillers. And I made a decision, a very conscious decision to not take them. So, I had to find a way to medicate otherwise. I did some research, and cannabis seemed like a good choice for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment