What to Include


Guidelines for Submissions

We are interested in detailed accounts of your medical marihuana experience. If you would be willing to write such an account, we would like it to include the following:

(1) A short paragraph which will tell the reader a little bit about you, how old are you, what is your marital status, do you have children, what is your occupation, etc. You may wish to mention schooling and your history with marihuana, if any, before you began to use it as a medicine.

(2) When and where was the symptom or illness for which you use marihuana first diagnosed? Who made the diagnosis?

(3) When did you first start to use marihuana medicinally and how did you discover or learn that it was helpful?

(4) Describe precisely how it is helpful to you and how it compares to the conventional drugs you have used to treat the same symptoms or illness. You might also want to comment on the relative expense of cannabis versus conventional drugs.

(5) How often do you use cannabis and how do you use it? Do you smoke it, and if so how (cigarettes, water pipe, etc.)? If you ingest it, in what form (cooked food, capsules, etc.)? Have you ever used it in any other way? Do you have any tips for people who need to learn from scratch how to use cannabis as a medicine?

(6) Have you ever been in legal difficulty because of your medicinal use of cannabis? If so, please briefly describe. (Remember, the emphasis in this book is on marihuana's usefulness as a medicine, not how outrageous the
prohibition against medical use is.)

(7) Please indicate whether, if we publish this piece, we should use your name or would you prefer to remain anonymous.

We ask you not to follow this outline so precisely that it looks like some kind of formulaic presentation. What we need is a clinical narrative or anecdote from you but one which addresses the above-mentioned points. You need not be concerned with the writing as we will edit it and eventually send it back to you for your approval wherever possible. Be sure to include a mailing address and a telephone number. Thanks so much for helping us with this project.

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