Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN’s chief medical correspondent, has publicly apologized for his part in misleading the public about the negative effects of Cannabis. Gupta’s admission that he had not done the proper research before condemning the drug, creates a path for others to do the same.
As Cannabis legalization gains momentum, this sort of back-peddling may become the norm. Those who claimed Cannabis is harmful will have to either feign ignorance as Gupta has or simply fade from public thought. Their dated opinions holding no weight in the face of an informed public.
In his op-ed “Why I changed my mind on weed”, Gupta explains his initial opposition and subsequent change of heart:
Long before I began this project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive. Reading these papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for medicinal marijuana. I even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled “Why I would Vote No on Pot.
“Well, I am here to apologize. I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.
“They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works.
Claiming Marijuana Can Be Safer Than Narcotics — Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN
I Was Wrong About Weed — Dr. Sanjay Gupta on The Young Turks
They get in narcotics, on morphine, Oxycontin, Dilaudid. These types of medications don’t work, maybe at all, but certainly not after a few months. People can develop tolerance to them. And you come to find that marijuana in a percentage of patients, not only does it work better than these narcotics, it’s much safer. — Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Dr Sanjay Gupta’s CNN Documentary Special “WEED”
Comments are closed.