I'm just finished with my first year of med school at UT Southwestern in Dallas, and I think I want to go into either emergency medicine or possibly pediatrics with a focus on adolescent medicine. I'm not a cannabis user, to be honest. I'm an advocate. I signed an agreement upon entering med school that I wouldn't use illegal substances, and I've stuck with that. Also, I'm in my 40s and married to a physician, and that'd be risky anyway to use weed. So I'm an advocate but not a user. When I finish school, I'll have to stay that way. Doctors can lose their licenses if they use illegal substances. I know it happens all the time, and it happens even worse with legal substances, which of course they have access to and samples of. But I won't break the law. It's important to me to be above reproach.

Anyway, I'll always be a cannabis advocate. It helped my sister immensely when she was in the last stages of cancer and chemo, and that sold me on it in a big way. It needs to be legalized for medical use in all states. Then decriminalized. Then, if possible, allowed for recreational use. That's a long way off.

It's a little-known fact, but there are several of us here who're advocates and not active cannabis users. I think it puts us in a good place to be persuasive and uniquely objective. I would love to think that by the time I get out of school, my patients in Texas might have access to medical MJ, but I'm not holding my breath.