Op-Ed: Cannabis Policy Needs Pharmacists | Pharmacy Times
Pharmacists are currently excluded from cannabis dispensing and oversight despite patients using it as a therapeutic agent, creating a gap in medication safety and standardized care. The authors argue that integrating pharmacists into cannabis policy and dispensing systems would improve patient safety and align cannabis use with established clinical standards.
Why this matters
Pharmacists are trained to identify drug-drug interactions, contraindications, and dosing concerns, yet cannabis remains outside their standard scope of medication management despite its documented interactions with CYP450-metabolized drugs and CNS depressants. The absence of pharmacist oversight in cannabis use creates a measurable gap in patient safety, particularly in polypharmacy populations where adverse event risk is highest. Integrating pharmacist review into cannabis dispensing protocols would align this therapeutic agent with evidence-based medication management standards applied to all other prescribed and recommended treatments.
Dr. Caplan take
“Pharmacists are among the most underutilized resources in cannabis medicine today, and the absence of their oversight in dispensary settings is a genuine patient safety gap that we have tolerated for far too long. In my practice, the patients who struggle most with dosing, drug interactions, and adverse effects are almost always those who never had a trained clinician review their regimen before they started.”
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