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I attended part of a meeting earlier today on medical cannabis and autism. Dr. Rachel Levine, PA Secretary of Health gave the opening remarks which included a general review of the PA MM program, an update on activity, and took questions. I also spoke with her briefly afterwards. Below are excerpts from my notes. Being presented without comment or endorsement, just passing along what I heard. Grouped to aid readability. Pricing/Availability/Vaping Cases is aware of concerns regarding pricing and expects PA to set up an assistance program for the indigent once the final regulations are issued ..read more

Please use the link below to view a chart of product-specific conditions, effectiveness, and effect from self-reported respondents. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JcCH--9wxxzTsij85ylXYM4PZQC1JnQmqWvBf7-c1f8/edit?usp=sharing ..read more

The Herbology Dispensary allows customers to provide online comments (detail at end of the this document) and ratings of their experience. The overall rating is 4.8 from more than 30 reviews since late last year. The comments provide a limited but useful preliminary idea of a potential construct to a predictive modeling effort (not withstanding the previously mentioned limitations to this kind of data.)  The mentions in reviews can be segmented into the “functional” areas below. While the vast majority of reviews were relative to staff and were positive, the importance of that category a ..read more

Any cannabis dispensary would be thrilled to receive reviews like the online reviews of the Herbology Dispensary in Altoona, PA. The shortcoming of that type of feedback and traditional satisfaction and customer surveys is that they are not actionable. They are not actionable because of the: ·         inherent biased sampling; ·         lack of depth with regard to underlying drivers of the “great” conclusion; ·         relative importance of those drivers; and ·         limited view it represents from just one of multiple stakeholder (albeit a critical one, patients). To make up for these in ..read more

Overall, the U.S. medical marijuana clinical study can be described as modest, fragmented, occurring without major industry leaders but growing and with more activity than ever before. 2017 set a new record as 34 study starts listed marijuana as the “intervention”. There was a slight drop off in 2018 with 28 begun. Both totals continued a recent trend (Chart 3). From 1999 to 2015 there were an average of 10.5 new studies started each year. Since then, the average has nearly tripled to 30 new studies per year. The average trial in the data set is scheduled to last about four years. As expected ..read more

Currently Available Products To date, the FDA has approved three marijuana/CBD related products: Epidiolex, Marinol, and Syndros. These approved products are only available with a prescription from a licensed healthcare provider. Epidiolex (a purified form of the drug substance CBD) is indicated for the treatment of seizures associated with Lennox-Gastout syndrome or Dravet syndrome in patients 2 years old or older. Marinol and Syndros approved uses include the treatment of anorexia associated with weight loss in AIDS patients. Both contain the active ingredient dronabinol, a synthetic delta-9 ..read more

In 46 states and the District of Columbia, millions of patients and thousands of physicians are engaged in what may be the single largest therapeutic experiment of all time – the use of marijuana to treat hundreds of conditions. This is in spite of the paucity of evidence on effectiveness based on the heretofore “gold standard” of randomized clinical trials. While that standard has rightly been challenged as universally appropriate (e.g. The Right to Try Act, §499.0295, F.S.) , it’s not since the HIV/AIDS epidemic that there’s been such a fundamental challenge to the biopharma research status ..read more

For a complete listing of medical conditions approved for treatment with medical cannabis, please send an email to: pmalamis@gmail.com ..read more