With over 27 states agreeing to the legalization of medical marijuana in the United States, there is a big range of dispensaries and a variety of medical marijuana strains as well as different marijuana products such as tonics, creams, edibles and tinctures all at your disposal.
However, even with a medical marijuana recommendation from a state-certified health care provider, the thought of heading to the dispensary for the first time will definitely be overwhelming.
This, however, should never stop you from getting professional advice from a licensed medical marijuana doctor given the simple procedure and requirements. In addition to the marijuana doctors giving you a variety, they provide you with information on how to use it and which works better in certain medical conditions. Remember that appointments with medical marijuana doctors are not any different from appointments with any other type of physician.
First and foremost, when placing the appointment, you need to be sure that the doctor is certified and this can be proven if he or she is listed on the medical board. The reason for this is because there are several fraudulent doctors who might land you into legal messes.
Meeting the Doctor
Just like any other hospital, medical marijuana dispensaries have procedures that have to be followed by patients and one of those is filling in a few forms. While at this, you are expected to have moved with the original letter of recommendation from your doctor as well as some form of identification, for example, an identification card, driver’s license, or passport. It even gets easier if you have a medical marijuana card.
The doctor then performs an examination for your condition and evaluates it basing on the current medical records and any diagnosis documentation you may have brought along. After the evaluation, the doctor writes up a medical marijuana recommendation for your condition.
Note that it is a recommendation and not a marijuana prescription specifically because marijuana is still considered a schedule 1 drug under the US federal law and hence prescriptions are illegal. All in all, all this goes down to whether you actually qualify for the medical marijuana according to the law.
The doctors are not supposed to be affiliated with any marijuana distributor and by law can NOT recommend a marijuana dispensary. For those under the age of 18, you must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian
As we all know, the use of marijuana whether for medical purposes or recreational use has some slight side effects. It is therefore up to the doctor at this point to outline a treatment plan, discuss the side effects, risks and benefits of treatment, and arrange a follow-up visit for the patient. This includes the different and most appropriate ways of using cannabis basing on the condition at hand to maximize beneficial effects.
For example, a knowledgeable medical marijuana doctor cannot recommend a patient with asthma to smoke the weed but rather to vaporize it because then harmful smoke toxins are avoided. However, this does not mean that smoking marijuana is entirely harmful as it has been recommended for patients with severe neurological disorders or cancer.
Therefore, the diagnostic and recommendation all depends on your doctor and how dire or miner the condition is. The letter of recommendation acquired from the medical marijuana doctor is the one that grants you this highly therapeutic plant.
NOTE: For the patients worried about confidentiality, the conversation you have with the doctor is considered as highly confidential and therefore cannot be used against you.
Conclusion
More and more physicians are recommending medical marijuana as a much more effective solution for the treatment of several conditions and because of this, the number of marijuana medical doctors is on the rise. Unfortunate, this has carried along it fraudulent doctors who write invalid medical marijuana recommendations or marijuana prescriptions which could potentially land some innocent patients into trouble.
Source: Medical Marijuana Blog
View Original
