By Margo Pierce
CityBeat.com
Click here for the original article
Marijuana is a medicine. Not many doctors are willing to make that kind of statement publicly, especially when U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration raids result in the jailing of physicians, terminally ill patients and state-licensed marijuana growers in states where the medicinal use of marijuana is permitted by law.
But Richard J. Wyderski, a physician at Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton, believes the benefits of the herbal therapy far outweigh the risks of pushing for legalization. In this case he’s publicly backing Senate Bill 343, most commonly referred to as the Ohio Medical Compassion Act sponsored by Sen. Tom Roberts (D-Dayton).
“I provided testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Wyderski says. “I talked about the historical aspects of marijuana — it was a medicine back in the 1800s and early 1900s — and the regulatory stuff that happened that led to it no longer being used medicinally even though it was on the U.S. pharmacopoeia until the early 1940s…