CLINICS FILL NEED FOR MEDICAL POT APPROVALS

At MMM Patient ID Centers in Mt. Clemens and Royal Oak, walk-in
clients pay $99, show a doctor their medical records and confer in a
private office before they can get the doctor's signature on their
applications to use medical marijuana.

Such one-purpose clinics are filling the need for doctors to approve
Michiganders for medical marijuana use, while other physicians
increasingly balk at doing so, some patients say.

The MMM Patient ID Centers don't provide the drug because that would
make the business vulnerable to police raids, owner Perry Winfrey,
40, of Farmington Hills said.

Michigan requires medical marijuana users to get a doctor's signature
each year.

But major hospitals have told physicians not to sign, claiming that
doing so opens doctors to liability, said Rick Thompson, editor of
the Michigan Medical Marijuana Magazine.

No such policy exists for the 1,200 doctors at the Henry Ford Health
System, but "we are not aware of any doctors signing an application"
for medical marijuana use, hospital spokesman Dwight Angell said.

Some physicians, like infectious disease specialist Dr. Charles
Craig, who practices in Howell and Ypsilanti, formerly signed the
forms, but Craig told patients he must stop.

Craig, who declined to be interviewed, sent patients a letter Nov. 29
stating that he feared criminal sanctions if he signed the forms
because "the Michigan Attorney General has declared the Michigan
Medical Marijuana Act to be illegal."