To the Editor:

As a physician practicing internal medicine for over 30 years, medicinal marijuana was suggested to me, but I was very reluctant to start the program. I felt that this would invite patients into my office who just wanted to use marijuana for recreational use. After some persistence from my office manager, I slowly started to introduce qualified patients requesting medicinal cannabis to my practice.

To my surprise, the patients requesting to participate in the program proved to be some of the most complex patients that I have ever treated: crippling back pain with multiple failed surgeries that opiates insufficiently treated, war veterans and rape victims with PTS, anxiety not responding to conventional treatments, crippling pain from shingles, neuropathy, and much more.

The patients ages have ranged from 15-98 years old. I have treated police officers, lawyers, physicians, state workers, therapists, university professors, politicians, and anyone who has failed conventional medical treatments. Many older adults have expressed their concern trying the program but came in because nothing else has helped them.

In a relatively short time of treatment, I started to observe real control of disease that I haven’t witnessed in over 30 years of using conventional medicine.

I started taking several courses and seminars in cannabis realizing that there was much more to learn as clinical data was sparse. So, I made spreadsheets from the thousands of patients that I treated and made my own analyses and published a paper with my results and conclusions.

I have realized that specific strains and dosing of cannabis were most effective with certain conditions. Cannabis has improved some conditions more than 50 percent with up to 100 percent pain control of certain diseases (testimonials on Brianshaffermd.com).

I hope that the information that I’ve provided from my clinical experience with cannabis dispels some of the misinformation that has been circulating in our community.

Brian Shaffer MD, FACP
Bunn Drive