The agenda for the upcoming meeting of the Medical Board of California (MBC) —to be held at a hotel near the San Francisco Airport January 18-19— makes no reference to further discussion of the board’s recently adopted ” Guidelines for the Recommendation of Cannabis for Medical Purposes.”

I emailed MBC Executive Director Kimberly Kirchmeyer as follows:

At the previous meeting a plan was made to discuss at this meeting the wording of an “Agreement” between patients who receive cannabis approvals and the physicians issuing such approvals. But I don’t see such a discussion on the agenda. Am I missing it?

Ms Kirchmeyer responded:

Thank you for your email.  No, you are not missing it on the agenda.  The Board has not received the edits from interested parties needed for this document and therefore the document could not be discussed at this meeting.

The interested parties, presumably, are the CMA, which requested a harsher line on cannabis use during pregnancy (and noted that the word “prescribe” should be changed to “recommend”). They were interested enough to weigh in after questioning the wording of the Guidelines at the last meeting (in late October).

Evidently there will be no opportunity at the upcoming meeting to challenge/discuss the publication of the odious “Decision Tree” as part of the MBC’s Guidelines. 
Steve Robinson, MD, has pointed out the contradiction between the Decision Tree —which directs physicians to treat cannabis as a medicine of last resort—  and the wording of the Guidelines to which it is appended.
The Society of Cannabis Clinicians —which considers itself an interested party— is planning to request that the medical board add a discussion of the Decision Tree and the equally problematic “Agreement” to its upcoming meeting agenda. O’Shaughnessy’s  is not optimistic that the board is capable of flexibility. The self-contradictory policy doesn’t seem to embarrass them —not even those members with law degrees.
Read O’S coverage here.