STUDY GIVES HARD DATA ON USERS OF MEDICAL POT

Nearly 16 years have passed since California voters enacted
Proposition 215, which allows for the use of marijuana when
recommended by a physician. Yet during this time, surprisingly little
demographic data has been collected on the growing number of
Californians consuming cannabis as a state-authorized medicine.
Predictably, this dearth of data has fueled allegations from
Proposition 215 critics that few Californians using cannabis are
doing so for "legitimate" medical purposes. Advocates of the law
similarly rely on anecdotal evidence to enforce the notion that the
law is working largely as voters intended and is seldom abused.

A newly published study by researchers at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, for the first time offers a statewide
empirical analysis of the population characteristics of California's
medical marijuana community. And while the study is unlikely to put
an end this contentious debate, it does provide some needed and
long-overdue clarity.

The authors analyzed data from 1,746 consecutive admissions to nine
medical marijuana assessment clinics operating throughout California.
Among the researchers' findings:

Three-fourths of the patients sampled were male and three-fifths were
Caucasian. Compared with census data for California, the patients in
this sample were on average "somewhat younger, reported slightly more
years of formal education, and (were) more often employed."

Authorized patients were most likely to be between the ages of 25 and
34 (27.5 percent), followed by those between the ages of 35 to 44
(21.3 percent) and 45 to 54 (20.4 percent).

The most common reasons patients cited for using medical marijuana
were the relief of pain, spasms, headache and anxiety, as well as to
improve sleep and relaxation.

Patients typically reported that cannabis provided them with more
than one therapeutic benefit, and four in five (79.3 percent)
reported having first tried other medications prescribed by their
physicians, almost half of which were opiates.

A majority of the population assessed (56.1 percent) said they used
cannabis prior to sleep.

Most (40.1 percent) of patients assessed used only moderate amounts
of cannabis (up to 3 grams per week). Thirty-six percent of patients
reported using 4 to 7 grams of cannabis, and 23.3 percent said they
consumed more than 7 grams of marijuana per week.

Patients' use of tobacco was "somewhat higher than in the general
population, but (their) prevalence of alcohol use was significantly
lower" than that of the general population. Their use of other
illicit substances, including cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin was
also lower than that of the general population.

Authors of the study, which appears in The Journal of Psychoactive
Drugs, said that their findings affirmed that California's medical
marijuana patient community is evolving. "Compared to earlier studies
of medical marijuana patients, these data suggest that the patient
population has evolved from mostly HIV/AIDS and cancer patients to a
significantly more diverse array," they concluded. "This suggests
that the patient population is likely to continue evolving as new
patients and physicians discover the therapeutic uses of cannabis."

What impact, if any, this evolution will have on the ongoing
political debate over the legalization of marijuana as a medicine in
California and elsewhere remains to be seen. But at a minimum these
findings should provide a rebuttal to some of the more pervasive
stereotypes and specious claims surrounding who in the Golden State
uses medical cannabis and why.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these findings ought to
reinforce California voters' continued support for patients'
continued legal access to medical marijuana 16 years after the
passage of the nation's inaugural cannabis legalization law.