Mother's milk and the muffin man: grassroots innovations in medical marijuana delivery systems

Abstract

In the ongoing debates over medical marijuana, opponents often conflate the alleged risks of cannabis therapeutics with the acknowledged harms associated with smoking. Although smoking is the most widely used method of administering marijuana, it is not the only available means. This paper provides an account of the production, distribution, and administration of non-smokable cannabis products by members of a California health care collective, the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana. WAMM has developed a variety of alternative methods of administering cannabis orally and externally that challenge the rhetorical equivalence between smoking as a delivery method and botanical marijuana as a medicine. Their experience with low-cost and low-tech production techniques has enabled even the poor and uninsured among them to manage the debilitating symptoms of their illnesses and the side-effects of their often onerous courses of treatment, without smoking. The organization provides an informative example of.