great post Doc.....from what ive seen with people and my own experiance:

does marijuana qualify as a form of medicine? yes definitely...

is it better than what the doc can give yah? depends....only place ive seen it truly excel over normal meds with any solid regularity is with nausea for chemo.....

with everything else its a crapshoot but one thing to keep in mind that people forget to bring up is quality of life and alot of times while pot may not work as good as some pill the side effects that go with pot are often much easier to live with than the side effects of other meds and just being able to enjoy life is a huge deal....

ive been on opiates daily for chronic pain for over a decade and i can tell you it [bleep] sucks....ive tried every drug any doc has suggested that even had a small chance of working in order to get rid of the opiates, most of these drugs work in the brain, not where the pain is and because of that they tend to have a laundry list of possible side efects and if your one of the lucky ones who doesnt get the side effects than these drugs are a godsend.....if your like me and tend to ge the side effects than the drugs are damn near worse than the pain....

with some diseases or syndromes like MS which docs dont understand real well, for some people pot makes a huge improvement in their quality of life sometimes just cause if you have to be stoned on something pot beats opiates if you have to be on it every day for months and years on end and there is even anecdotal evidence that it actually treats the issue....is that hard science? no ofcourse not but MS is a miserable condition to live with so what the hell it sure aint gonna make yah worse...

for someone like me where things like cymbalta doesnt work or they have a bad reaction to it like i did then there are two options as far as drugs go, pot or opiates.....either way your on a mind altering chemical so whats it matter which it is? and as someone else on this thread said as far as pain goes, if you think it improves the amount of pain your in than it does work...

A serious student of the "Armchair Safari" always looking for Africa/Asia hunting books