While there “may well be” legitimate uses for medical marijuana, doctors have been thrust into an “untenable” position by being made the sole gatekeepers to legal pot, says the incoming president of the nation’s most powerful doctors’ lobby.

“We have Health Canada telling us that marijuana is not a medicine, we have our malpractice insurance company telling us to be very cautious because nobody is taking responsibility for the safety of it,” says Queen’s University cardiologist Dr. Chris Simpson, who will assume the helm of the Canadian Medical Association at the organization’s annual general meeting in Ottawa later this month.

Simpson said that while he has heard “many compelling anecdotes” that marijuana can help patients with hard to treat seizures, HIV and other conditions, “we have people out there saying marijuana can cure cancer, which seems quite improbable.”

“Somewhere in between those two extremes is the truth, and I think we need to find the truth, and the way to do that is with the appropriate research.”

His comments come after the CMA’s outgoing president, Dr. Louis Hugo Francescutti, drew ire from some doctors for telling an Ottawa Citizen reporter that people who seek the drug in a doctors’ office are just looking for “dope.”

Simpson suggested it’s time to regroup.

“We need to just back up, take a deep breath and talk about the facts,” he said. “Let’s figure out what the appropriate role for marijuana is, if there is one.”

The controversy over medicinal pot will be high on the agenda at the annual doctors’ meeting, dubbed the “parliament of Canadian medicine,” where confirmed speakers this year include Federal Health Minister Rona Ambrose, NDP leader Tom Mulcair and former Quebec premier Jean Charest.

Other issues to be tackled at the Aug. 17-20 meeting include medical professionalism and end-of-life, including the highly charged debate over euthanasia.

The CMA officially opposes euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide in a policy that has not been updated since 2007.

Some doctors are arguing it’s time the CMA moved beyond the “yes” or “no” arguments and prepare for a future where euthanasia is legalized across the country, and not just in Quebec, which has passed into law legislation permitting “medical aid in dying.”

Simpson said doctors are divided, “just like society is split on it.

“At the end of the day, we may not have consensus so much as we have the reality of an environment where it may be permitted. It will be a question of how to prepare for that.”

Simpson is more concerned that the focus on euthanasia has taken much needed attention away from palliative care and advance care directives — legal documents that spell out life-prolonging treatments people would and would not want should they ever lose the capacity to speak for themselves.

Simpson’s specialty is sudden cardiac death due to heart arrhythmias. “I implant a lot of defibrillators in patients.” The purpose of a defibrillator is to rescue people from dying of an erratic or abnormal heart beat.

“Obviously we put them in because we think their life isn’t ready to end and we want to prevent a preventable death,” he said.