Investigators from the nonpartisan Institute of Medicine (IOM) released their findings, "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base," on March 17, 1999. The White House Office of National Drug Control commissioned the 267-page report shortly after voters in California passed the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which legalized the medical use of cannabis under state law.
The IOM report affirmed that marijuana and its constituents possessed numerous therapeutic properties, including the ability to control pain, nausea, and anxiety, and to stimulate appetite.
"[T]here are patients with debilitating symptoms for whom smoked marijuana might provide relief," the study concluded. "Except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications."
except for the harms associated with smoking...
In other words, smoking cannabis is as dangerous as smoking lettuce? So the "chemicals" in cannabis have no effect on the harm, according to the IOM.
Therefore, if the patients ingests cannabis by other means (vaporization, tincture, edible) then any and all harms associating with cannabis are dropped, according to the IOM.
