The DEA chief called medical marijuana ‘a joke’

By Christopher Ingraham November 10 WashPost

Last week, the acting chief of the Drug Enforcement Administration called medical marijuana "a joke" during a Q&A with reporters. Now, medical marijuana patients are calling for his head, with an online petition demanding his resignation attracting over 10,000 signatures on change.org.

Now patients are calling for his resignation

Here's what administrator Chuck Rosenberg said about medical marijuana, via CBS News:

"What really bothers me is the notion that marijuana is also medicinal -- because it's not," Rosenberg said in a briefing to reporters. "We can have an intellectually honest debate about whether we should legalize something that is bad and dangerous, but don't call it medicine -- that is a joke."
[...] 

"There are pieces of marijuana -- extracts or constituents or component parts -- that have great promise" medicinally, he said. "But if you talk about smoking the leaf of marijuana -- which is what people are talking about when they talk about medicinal marijuana -- it has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine."

Rosenberg's argument that smoking marijuana "has never been shown to be safe or effective as a medicine" has been contradicted by numerous studies. A meta-analysis of 79 medical marijuana studies involving 6,462 patients, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association earlier this year, found "moderate-quality evidence to support the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of chronic pain and spasticity." There was low-quality evidence suggesting marijuana had therapeutic applications for other conditions as well.

(More here.)