n of the substance and those who see marijuana prescriptions as a method of providing compassion to suffering patients. Irrespective of the social aspects of cannabis use, and despite U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's declaration in United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative in 2001 that marijuana "has no medical benefits worthy of an exception" to the federal prohibition against manufacturing and distributing it, the medical community appears to understand the benefits of adding to the knowledge base regarding marijuana. One reason for that is that, at the state level, various regulations have evolved concerning medical use and cultivation of cannabis (Delogu, 2005), and it stands to reason that responsible physicians as a group would prefer to have more rather than less information on any aspect of clinical treatment. In that connection, a growing body of research suggests that the marijuana plant has properties relevant to medical applications. As has been the case with multiple pharmacological substances now in wide use and distribution, beneficial as well as deleterious health effects of marijuana have been identified by research studies reported in refereed journals. It is to studies reported in those journals that this research now turns.
Cannabis sativa has a long history in multiple cultures of being employed medicinally. By the 1960s, when systematic clinical investigations of marijuana were undertaken, the effort was mainly directed toward understanding the chemistry of the substance and linking that with its "psychoactive" properties. What are called cannabin
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