Wondering why your doctor at Mass General or Brigham and Women’s won’t write you a medical marijuana recommendation?
Look no further than Dr. Steve Adelman, Director of Physician Health Services (PHS) and a member of the board of DPH
who recently opined that the Boston Marathon bombing might have been partially caused by marijuana withdrawal.
Adelman and MA PHS, a Non Governmental Organization incorporated through the Mass Medical Society is a group with extra government powers to revoke licenses of medical doctors in Massachusetts.
How does this scam work? The State PHS is funded by and represents drug testing, pharma, residential treatment centers, insurance companies and the “Just Say No” foundations. Our MA PHS is one spoke in the wheel of the national network of state run Physician Health Programs (PHP’s).
Once enrolled in this system, doctors are forced to comply with years of drug testing under the supervision of PHS without independent oversight or appeal.
It is no wonder that most doctors in Massachusetts are afraid to mention the word “marijuana” in regards to treatment for their patients. They’re afraid of being targeted by the PHS who are increasingly political and vengeful against any medical professional who does not preach their 12-step addiction philosophy.
A few doctors in Massachusetts have spoken up on the Physician Health Services fraud and abuse.
J. Wesley Boyd (MD) and John Knight (MD) report in the Journal of Addiction Medicine: “For most physicians, participation in a PHP evaluation is coercive, and once a PHP recommends monitoring, physicians have little choice but to cooperate with any and all recommendations if they wish to continue practicing medicine.”
“Since PHP practices are unknown to most physicians prior to becoming a client of the PHP, many PHP’s operate outside the scrutiny of the medical community at large. Physicians referred to PHP’s are often compromised to some degree, have very little power, and are therefore not in a position to voice what might be legitimate objections to a PHP’s practices.”
Which sounds exactly like the situation of Massachusetts’ own Dr. Michael Langan.
Langan was a victim of a fraudulent PHS drug test that was later thrown out, but that was only the beginning:
“The College of American Pathologists did a full investigation and confirmed the fraudulent drug test. They sanctioned the lab involved and mandated they amend the positive test as invalid, but PHS got the heads up from the lab and reported me to the board for non-compliance with mandated thrice weekly AA Meetings.”
“So I was suspended in December based on not complying with recommendations based on a fake test,” say Langan.
Why was Langan targeted like this?
“I was being monitored with weekly urine tests by them because I signed up in 2007. I had developed an opiate problem and they advertised they helped doctors. They did not like me because I called bullshit on the 12-step indoctrination.”
So what does this mean for medical marijuana advocates and patients? Look no further than the MA DPH medical marijuana regulations and who got to write and approve them. The same cast of characters, Dr. Steve Adelman and his cohorts. The PHP movement has bigger goals, to take these practices to the general public, if we don’t stop them first.
Some states such as California have kicked them out; it’s time to do the same here.