As I'm finishing up school I see so many doctors in all seriousness recommend marijuana for patients, or at least not oppose proposed marijuana use by patients, in conditions of chronic pain, or oncology. I was honestly shocked, because these aren't 28 year old doctors, but people in their 50s and 60s.

Ironically in half the cases the patients are resistant to the idea, this lady was taking Norcos every 4 hours, doc seriously asked her about starting medical marijuana so she can seriously cut down her pill usage. She didn't want to "take drugs". She's was in her late 60s I can understand the reluctance, but still, I'm surprised at how many doctors I've encountered that are in support, and my sample size is very small when you consider how many there are in the country.

It's really sad to see people with serious injuries that render them dependent on painkillers. Sometimes you just can't fix a person's body, they will have to be in pain. Not just the pain, but you can see that some of these people have become addicts, you see that calculation in their mind, the lies about lost bottles and misplaced pills, it's so sad that on some level they're no different than people on the streets looking for heroin, their brains are already wired like that.

There are a lot of side effects with long term use, so I'm not one of those people who think it's a miracle drug to throw at everything, but when it comes to chronic pain management, when the only real alternative is usually a lifetime of progressive opiate addiction, adding marijuana to treatment has really showed not only a decrease in suicides, but allows for a slower tolerance, which means these drugs will still work at the end of the person's life when the pain will be the worst.