Dear Pot Lawyer,
I thought doctors were able to prescribe weed, but turns out they can’t. So how are patients getting medical cards?
Doctors cannot prescribe weed because “marijuana” is listed on Schedule I of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). The CSA has five schedules (or classifications), and Schedule I is reserved for drugs with “no accepted medical use” and a “high potential for abuse.” If your doctor wrote you a scrip for weed, or for MDMA, LSD, or heroin or any other drug on Schedule I, she would risk the loss of her DEA license. And if that happened, she would be unable to prescribe anything at all. Not even Robitussin.
Fortunately, doctors cannot be barred from “recommending” that a patient consider cannabis as a health care option, or discussing cannabis generally, under state or federal law. The medical cannabis statutes of most states, going back to California’s Proposition 215 in 1996, have chosen this “recommendation” language carefully: It arises from legal precedent in the context of abortion, which tends to show that doctors cannot be punished for discussing particular health care options with patients. You can thank the First Amendment.