Veterans groups have increasingly been making calls to the White House to allow for the use of marijuana for medical purposes in veterans populations, mainly for the treatment of chronic pain and post traumatic stress disorder. It turns out the VA actually heeded some of the messages that these groups were putting out there and passed a policy at the highest level, which allowed patients who live in medical marijuana states, veterans who are using marijuana medicinally in states that allow it, that those VA hospitals where they are also getting treatment for things like chronic pain, those VA’s would not be allowed to fire those patients just because they are using marijuana for medical purposes through maybe an outside doctor from the VA. That’s called cooperative non-interference.

Veterans hospitals policy towards medical marijuana patients is one of cooperative non-interference. That’s very hopeful for patients who live in those states, but there are a lot of states where veterans live where medical marijuana is not legal at this time. So they should know that there are a lot of conditions and syndromes that veterans face, most predominantly post-traumatic stress disorders and chronic pain related to injuries and trauma, that marijuana has been shown in pre-clinical and other clinical studies to be beneficial for.