Marijuana -Pushing Pot!

                             Canada's first publicly traded medical  marijuana producer has hired three salesmen to visit doctors offices.  As a Family Physician for over fifty years, you might think I'd be well used to having the so-called "Detail Men"  then "Detail Persons" and finally the rather fancier name of "Academic Detailers" that the drug companies call their sales force, visit me.  Indeed I am, and truth be known, I often welcomed the better informed, better trained and experienced of their ranks.  If they came well prepared and knowledgeable about the studies carried out and presented the evidence in an honest and forthright manner, together with  the approval  of  the appropriate Canadian  and/or American  Administrations I was prepared to listen  to them and to consider the data they had to present.   
                              The story was different then.  It was before Big Pharma, USA was advertising to the general public and proposing life long treatment with expensive drugs for non-existent or barely existing diseases, like "low T."   Patients are being encouraged to seek various prescriptions for which there is often little or no indication.  Potent medicines are increasingly available over the counter.   All of these medications have potentially dangerous side effects.
                            Now, the ante is being upped.  Thirteen licensed marijuana producers have entered the arena in Canada, many more will follow.  I am sure that a large sales force is being provided to persuade doctors that there is evidence to prescribe their product liberally, despite the fact that the rigorous type of evaluations required for almost any medication to receive approval is lacking.  
                             I am sure the link between cannabis and schizophrenia will not be emphasized, nor the association with traffic accidents or bizarre behaviour.  Nor the relationship between smoking it and pulmonary disease.
                             In many instances this is going to put physicians in a very difficult situation with certain kinds of patients and do nothing to improve the physician-patient relationship.