As voters head to the polls this November to decide on whether or not to make the recreational use of cannabis legal for anyone 21 and over they will need to decide whether this is something that will benefit the State of California and more importantly our families.

This week the city of Lake Forrest made a decision to eliminate the marijuana collectives operating within city limits. Apparently this decision is going to be appealed but in the meantime collectives will be operating in limbo.

Today I had the opportunity to evaluate a patient who just had surgery to repair a fractured left wrist (radius) as a result of a motor cycle accident. Typically patients that suffer from post operative pain get prescribed opiate narcotics such as vicodin, oxycontin and percocet. The problem with that is that many patients can’t take those medications because of the side effects. As a result more and more patients are turning to cannabis to control their pain. This patient was medicating once before he went to bed each day since the surgery. He has not had to take one percocet that he was prescribed by his orthopedic surgeon. In addition he has been sleeping “great” which is a plus when trying to recover from surgery.

This morning in my Irvine CA office I had my annual follow up with a 22 year old female who came in last year as a result of severe Irritable Bowel Syndrome or commonly known as IBS. Her symptoms were severe nausea, lack of appetite and intermittent diarrhea. She explained that for past year her symptoms have improved tremendously. She has been medicating with a sativa strain twice per day and very rarely has nausea. Her appetite is greatly improved and she very rarely has any diarrhea.

As medical director for Medical Cannabis of Southern California I often evaluate patients who suffer from neuropathic pain as a result of diabetes. Neuropathic pain means pain that is associated with direct pathology to the nerves themselves. This is in contrast to pain in a muscle whose signal is transported to the brain via the healthy nerves. In diabetes the elevated levels of sugar in the blood actually cause damage to the nerves leading to chronic pain. Cannabis has been shown in several studies to reduce the pain associated with various causes of neuropathic pain including HIV neuropathy.