"Medical" marijuana is now legal in Connecticut. I know this because I recently received an email from the hospital telling me so. They also told me I could not prescribe it in the hospital, because it is against federal law. They did not explain how the state can pass a law that contradicts a federal statute, but hey, they're medical people, not lawyers. They probably don't understand it either.

The larger question is why I would want to prescribe marijuana, or for that matter any drug that can result in intoxication, abuse, habituation, and dependence (addiction) and cause severe lung disease, cancer, cardiac disease, infertility, cognitive dysfunction, and psychosis?

The answer: "I don't."

So why are doctors being offered the ability to prescribe marijuana? The reason is political, not medical. There are enough voters who want marijuana and this is the only legal way they can get it. I suspect it is the planned first step to complete legalization.

Is it a good idea? That depends on your point of view. There are, after all, other perfectly legal drugs that are also bad for you, such as alcohol and nicotine. The fact that marijuana provides three times as much tar (and 50 percent more carcinogens) as cigarettes is just a question of degree.

All I ask of the politicians is to keep us (doctors) out of it. There is no medical condition for which marijuana is a superior treatment to the standard, conventional drugs already available. I write this unequivocally and without hesitation.

Doctors don't need to prescribe it. We already have our hands full dealing with the legions of narcotics addicts who feign illness and severe pain to obtain prescriptions for legal narcotics (at this point a much larger volume than the illegal heroin trade). The only doctors who favor this turn of events are the "pill mill" practitioners who need a new drug now that the feds are (finally) busy shutting down their narcotics operations.

So a word to the wise: If you are looking for marijuana, try the pusher, not the clinic.