Great News For Vets.....VA Allows Medical Marijuana for Pain

[mtnmojo]

Found this on canorml website, and I wanted to share it with all my
Vet Brothers and Sisters....

VA Allows Medical Marijuana for Pain

Posted July 3rd, 2009 by canorml_admin
UPDATE: July 19, 2010 - The Veterans Health Administration has made it known that it will allow use of medical marijuana by VA patients on opiod therapy. This is good news for the many chronic pain patients who have been told that they must give up marijuana in order to continue on RX pain medications. Private pain clinics have been wrongly stampeded into disallowing medical marijuana on the bogus grounds that it is against federal law. The fact that the VA officially allows it should help debunk these fears as groundless.


See a copy of the VA letter.
http://www.canorml.norml.net/news/VA.html
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UPDATE: VA doctors prohibited from prescribing medical pot
By SUE MAJOR HOLMES
The Associated Press
Wednesday, March 31, 2010; 4:10 AM

The Department of Veterans Affairs says it is developing a national policy, and the head of Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access believes a VA policy allowing medical marijuana "is inevitable."

July 2, 2009 - The Veterans Administration will ignore marijuana drug screening for pain patients who have legal medical marijuana recommendations, under a new policy reported by VA Watchdog.
This is an important development, as NORML has received a flood of recent complaints from medical marijuana patients who have been denied treatment by pain clinics after testing positive for marijuana. Included have been MMJ patients who were receiving opiates from the same clinic for many years, but were suddenly drug tested and told that they must either give up MJ or lose their opiate prescriptions.
The upsurge in such incidents has been due to growing pressure on pain clinics to crack down on prescription opiate abuse and diversion by more intensive drug screening of patients. Although the opiate abuse problem has nothing to do with marijuana, and there is no legal
requirement that clinics test for cannabinoids, many have been doing so anyway under the mistaken impression that they might be prosecuted for prescribing opiates to MMJ users. To our knowledge, not a single such prosecution has ever occurred.
On the contrary, recent studies show that cannabis is valuable for treating chronic pain, and in particular can be an effective adjunct to opiate therapy, reducing the need for opiates and other prescription drugs. There is accordingly no sound basis either medically or legally for denying treatment to chronic pain patients who test positive for medical marijuana. Hopefully, the new VA policy will help stem this perverse and misguided practice.
- D. Gieringer, Cal NORML

[mtnmojo]

http://veteransformedicalmarijuana.org/
Welcome to the VMMA


"When it comes to medical marijuana, I have more of a practical view than anything else. My attitude is that if it’s an issue of doctors prescribing medical marijuana as a treatment for glaucoma or as a cancer treatment, I think that should be appropriate because there really is no difference between that and a doctor prescribing morphine or anything else."
- Barack Obama 3.22.08

Incorporated in 2007, Veterans for Medical Marijuana Access (VMMA) advocates for veterans' rights to access medical marijuana for therapeutic purposes. VMMA also works to minimize the harm associated with marijuana use, which many veterans believe to be conviction and incarceration.
VMMA encourages all legislative bodies to endorse veterans' rights to use medical marijuana therapeutically and responsibly, and is working to end all prohibitions associated with such use.

VMMA is working to preserve the long established doctor-patient relationship to privacy rights and to safely discuss medical marijuana use within the V.A. healthcare system without fear of punishment or retribution.

Here are the latest VA statistics about Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans:
Veterans: 981,834 (out of nearly two million deployed)
Veterans Treated at VA Hospitals and Clinics: 425,538 (43.3% of veterans)
Veterans Diagnosed by VA with Mental Health Condition: 193,879 (45.6% of veterans treated by VA)
Veterans Diagnosed by VA with PTSD: 114,908 (27.0% of veterans treated by VA)
Veterans Filing Disability Claims Against VA: 381,782 (38.9% of veterans)
Veterans with Approved PTSD Claims: 53,079 (46.2% of the veterans diagnosed by VA with PTSD)

"We must remember that the best health care decisions are not made by government and insurance companies, but by patients and their doctors."
— President George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, January 23, 2007.

In recent years, the number of veterans seeking disability compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has spiked by almost 80 percent and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is currently providing more than $4 billion in compensation for the condition. The surge in claims by Vietnam War veterans and other former military personnel has revealed inconsistencies in how veterans are rated for PTSD disability and in compensation levels.

Against this backdrop, VA’s Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) asked the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council to convene a committee of experts to address several issues surrounding its administration of veterans’ compensation for PTSD. The resulting report, PTSD Compensation and Military Service, recommends ways to fix shortcomings in VA's program for evaluating and compensating veterans for service-connected PTSD and to restore confidence that the agency is compensating all veterans fairly. The report also addresses questions about how long after a traumatic event PTSD can arise and how to better manage PTSD claims related to sexual harassment or assault during military service.

Approximately 20% of veterans returning from Iraq/Afghanistan are being diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).
Medical research has shown medical marijuana has been very successful in treating PTSD and it's symptoms. Ask your VA doctor to discuss this with you, and advise you on the medical use.

Dr. Phillip Leveque is a combat veteran, Physician, Pharmacologist, and Forensic Toxicologist. He is one authority on treating PTSD and it's symptoms with Cannabis. He strongly recommends the use of medical marijuana to veterans with PTSD. (see: Salem News Veterans Articles).

Search va.gov/ptsd for more information. Ask your VA doctor, or any VA health care provider to discuss the symptoms with you, advise you for some treatment. Be assertive, every veteran deserves any, and all, medical and/or psychological help. If you do not ask, you may get passed over, not treated. Have no fear in discussing the medical use of marijuana. Many of us veterans are using it now, with our doctors advise.

Doctors at the VA recognize the benefits of Medical Marijuana as a PTSD treatment, but refuse to recommend Medical Marijuana as a treatment option. See this article at Salem-News.com for more infomation.

"One of the difficulties with post-traumatic stress disorder is that the readiness or need for treatment may emerge years after the trauma. Therefore, veterans and their families need long-term treatment options and long-term access to treatment, even if symptoms are not present at their time of discharge."
William H. Braun, Psychoanalyst
New York, May 19, 2009