Veterans Affairs committee  In evaluating a new patient, it's always appropriate to find out about any history of any drug use, prescription or otherwise—

Veterans Affairs committee  Drug use in the field or otherwise was most likely situational, in most instances. I haven't seen too many Vietnam combat veterans who have continued to use narcotics, heroin or otherwise. It's unusual. I think once other treatments are available to them and they are using other

Veterans Affairs committee  It's a daily regimen. It's an established, consistent regimen with follow-up.

Veterans Affairs committee  I have a child patient with a seizure disorder who takes 250 milligrams of THC a day with extraordinarily good results and no psycho-activity at all—I think “hallucinogenic” is probably an incorrect term—and others who are doing extremely well with two milligrams of THC and two m

Veterans Affairs committee  That is absolutely the case. There is no scientific evidence whatsoever that it is a gateway. The gateway, actually, is the dealer who has something else in that armamentarium, that little bag he carries around, and who says, “By the way, why don't you try this?” There is no sc

Veterans Affairs committee  Absolutely, yes.

Veterans Affairs committee  Last week, I saw a young woman who has been a patient of mine for four years, I would say, a service veteran with severe PTSD. She was taking, I think, seven different prescription drugs at the beginning of the cannabis intervention. As of last week, she had not taken any prescri

Veterans Affairs committee  It's not, in the U.S., as cannabis is considered to have no medical benefit or uses and a high abuse potential by the U.S. government. That's not to say that there's not a lot of interest, but the constraints that are placed on the veterans administration and the military establi

Veterans Affairs committee  Indeed.

Veterans Affairs committee  There is nothing in an official capacity in the U.S., but four years ago, the State of Colorado approved a bit over $2 million for a study of veterans and PTSD, using various cannabis profile plants. That study has completed most of its data-gathering. We don't have enough info

Veterans Affairs committee  I have not. I'm not familiar with the clinical presentation of it. Perhaps Dr. Waisglass can comment more on that. I have worked with veterans from the U.S. military forces who were given anthrax vaccine and had some significant reactions to that. A lot of them involved chronic p

Veterans Affairs committee  It's extraordinarily important. CRIS, the Cannabinoid Research Initiative of Saskatchewan, is a couple of years old now. A symposium was held in August, at which I spoke. The basic science research that's being done in Saskatchewan, specifically in this program, is really extraor

Veterans Affairs committee  There's PTSD, of course. I see a lot of veterans, and they refer their veteran friends to me, but 93% of the 88,000 or so patients who now have medical cannabis cards in Colorado use it for pain. One reason is that we don't have very good treatments for pain, and many of them are

Veterans Affairs committee  That's correct.

Veterans Affairs committee  Yes, thank you. This is an extremely important point. There are two papers, specifically one from Health Affairs from 2016 and one in the Journal of the American Medical Association, also from 2016, I think, which showed a very distinct decrease in the number of prescription pill