CANNAHEALTH Cannabis 101: Patient & Caregiver | Page 15

end the prohibition of cannabis.

Using the acronym POT, Al suggested the name for the organization – Patients Out of Time – and that said it all. Over the years we have avoided using the acronym, always using the full name because of the urgency in the name. A friend and videographer who helped our efforts designed our first logo which depicted a clock at the 11th hour overlaying a wheel chair overlaying the cannabis leaf to symbolize that suffering patients needed access to this ancient medicine NOW. Our initial board consisted of four of the federal patients and health care professionals. We were all volunteers on a mission and our focus was on the medicinal use of cannabis.

What Does Patients Out of Time Do?

Initially, we ran into roadblocks to find any entity that would provide continuing education credits for a cannabis conference. General Barry McCaffrey was the Drug Czar at the time and he would proclaim that no health care organization supported the notion of medical marijuana. We had already gotten the Virginia Nurses Association and the American Public Health Association to pass resolutions in support of patient access to medical cannabis. So, we created a list of organizations in support of medical cannabis, including states as they passed medical cannabis laws, and encouraged more organizations to take a stand as well. Health care professionals were intimidated by the federal prohibition and were not willing to add their individual names. Having their professional organization do so gave them safety in numbers and organizations were a more powerful voice than individual members.

You can find this list on our website: http://www.medicalcannabis.com/about/health-care-professionals/supporting-organizations/. Please let us know if your organization or group has a resolution in support of patient access to medical cannabis and we will add it to the list.

It took 5 years to secure an entity that was willing to accredit a national conference on cannabis therapeutics for health care professionals. Being able to grant continuing education credits to health care professionals indicates that the conference is based on science and the faculty is credible. Melanie Dreher, RN, PhD was Dean at the University of Iowa, College of Nursing (and also on our Board of Directors) and she convinced the College of Medicine to join her school in accrediting The First National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics that was then held in Iowa City, IA. The theme was Medical Marijuana: Science Based Clinical Applications and it was simulcasted to 8 locations. Once we held the first conference, we continued with a biennial series up through 2014 and then increased the frequency to an annual event due to the explosion of research on cannabis and the endocannabinoid system. See page 18 for our conference history.

Our 2015 conference marked the change to annual conferences and we introduced our new, more abstract logo, which signified cannabis and the 11th hour. We have established a reputation as the gold standard for high quality educational conferences that bring the state-of-the-art science from leading cannabis researchers throughout the world.