TY - JOUR PY - 2019// TI - Opioids, (non)-medical marijuana, and the cult of the body JO - Linacre quarterly A1 - Schimmoeller, Ethan SP - 47 EP - 55 VL - 86 IS - 1 N2 - Ohio's first medical marijuana dispensaries will open in the fall of 2018, so physicians, then, must decide whether they will participate. But is medical marijuana really medical? No, at best, it is an unproven botanical. Medicine today is progressively moving away from traditional understandings of health according to formal and final causation and toward wellness as an expanding, subjective ideal. Whereas patients are healthy if the doctor says so, patients are well if they say so. Pitched as a wellness product, cannabis presents itself as an existential palliative, part of an imminent cult of the body. Consequently, people often use cannabis to escape reality according to a new age mythos. Physicians can play their part by choosing not to certify for "medical" marijuana and seek to rediscover the body as more than mere dead matter in motion rather than insulating ourselves from the difficult questions of suffering, meaning, and purpose. Summary: Despite state-level legality, medical marijuana is not medical. Rather, it is often touted as part of a cult of the body to escape suffering and death.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0024-3639 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0024363919834475 ID - ref1 ER -