Hollywood, U.S.A. — Medbox company CEO, Dr. Bruce Bedrick commented on the recent admission by some Los Angeles City Councilmen that they are in favor of legalized medical marijuana. “We applaud the courage and conviction of belief shown by these city leaders,” Bedrick stated. “The weight of science validates that marijuana has significant medical efficacy. To ignore the evidence is to succumb to political tradewinds.”

Councilman Bill Rosendahl told The Los Angeles Times that he is in favor of legalizing marijuana and that he has had his own medical marijuana prescription for a decade, and relies on the drug to cope with neuropathy – a painful nerve disorder.

Paul Koretz, Councilman for the city’s Fifth District, told The Times that he is, “an unabashed supporter of medical marijuana.”

Both Koretz and Rosendahl said they share constituent concerns about the proliferation of marijuana, but disagree with the council’s latest strategy, which prohibits businesses from providing medical marijuana to even the most seriously ill patients.

Shortly after the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban medical marijuana, the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed to hear arguments challenging the federal government’s classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no medical value.

The appeal asserts that the federal government has acted arbitrarily and capriciously in its efforts to deny marijuana to millions of patients, and that the government cannot apply “different criteria to marijuana than to other drugs, ignore critical scientific data, misrepresent social science research, or rely upon unsubstantiated assumptions.”

Numerous studies have been published that show the medical benefits of marijuana for illnesses such as neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s. Last year, the National Cancer Institute added cannabis to its list of Complementary and Alternative Medicines, pointing out that it’s been therapeutically used for millennia.

A new, comprehensive study on the evidence that cannabis may be useful as medicine was published in May of this year in The Open Neurology Journal, a leading peer reviewed publication. The study concluded that marijuana’s federal classification as a Schedule I substance “is not tenable; (and) it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking.”

Medbox supports sensible regulations on the medical marijuana industry, including assuring that dispensaries maintain a proper distance from schools, parks and playgrounds; and that operators submit fingerprint samples to the City to insure that they are not convicted felons.

Medbox is also in favor of increasing legitimacy and transparency in the medical marijuana industry. The company has developed a patented system that tightly controls access of marijuana to only those patients that possesses a current doctor’s recommendation, and verifies the identity of the patient through both an identification card and a fingerprint scan. The Medbox system also maintains a permanent and unalterable record of each transaction to assure compliance with all regulations and for taxation purposes.

Bedrick summarized, “We believe that the Los Angeles City Council will construct sensible regulations regarding medical marijuana through the upcoming referendum or court challenges, if needed. This along with the upcoming federal hearing in October regarding reclassification of the drug, may allow access to this medicine without further legal ramifications for patients that rely on its

Image Courtesy of    guneyc

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