Sanjay Gupta Pens Letter to Jeff Sessions on Medical Cannabis
[dropcap class=”kp-dropcap”]I[/dropcap]n a letter personally penned to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, renowned doctor and CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta pleaded for sanity regarding medical cannabis as a replacement for deadly opioids.
The April 24 letter was published on CNN.
“Not only can cannabis work for a variety of conditions such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and pain, sometimes, it is the only thing that works. I changed my mind, and I am certain you can, as well,” Gupta told Sessions. “It is time for safe and regulated medical marijuana to be made available nationally. I realize this is an unconventional way to reach you, but your office declined numerous requests for an interview, and as a journalist, a doctor and a citizen, I felt it imperative to make sure you had access to our findings.”
Gupta focused on medical cannabis as an alternative to opioids. Drug overdoses killed about 68,000 US lives in 2017, just over 45,000 of them from opioids alone, Gupta argues. That translates to about 115 American deaths per day. The opioid scourge is so bad, he pointed out, that it’s actually lowered America’s life expectancy.
Gupta has spoken exclusively to CULTURE in the past about the efficacy of medical cannabis, which he now thoroughly recognizes.
“We know that cannabis can be a medicine,” Gupta told CULTURE in 2014. “I’ve seen this now myself. They’ve known this in other countries for a long time. We’ve probably known it here even though we haven’t been as public or as vocal about it. We know cannabis has been used as a medication openly in hospitals in Jerusalem because they believe it’s part of a treatment protocol that extends and improves lives.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures, he said, which is where medical cannabis comes in as a safer alternative for pain and dozens of other applications. Gupta’s letter pleads with Jeff Sessions to consider the science that backs up medical cannabis
