From 32 Ounces to Zero: A Medical Geographic Study of Dispensing a Cultivated Batch of “Plum” Cannabis Flowers to Medical Marijuana Patients in Washington State

Abstract

The medicinal use of cannabis is a growing phenomenon in the U.S. predicated on the success of overcoming specific spatial challenges and establishing particular human-environment relationships. This article takes a medical geographic “snapshot” of an urban site in Washington State where qualifying chronically ill and debilitated patients are delivered locally produced botanical cannabis for medical use. Using interview, survey, and observation, this medical geographic research project collected information on the social space of the particular delivery site and tracked the production cost, reach, and health value of a 32-ounce batch of strain-specific medical cannabis named “Plum” dispensed over a four-day period. A convenience sample of 37 qualifying patients delivered this batch of cannabis botanical medicine was recruited and prospectively studied with survey instruments. Results provide insight into patients' self-rated health, human-plant relationships, and travel-to-clinic distances. An overall systematic geographic understanding of the medical cannabis delivery system gives a grounded understanding of the lengths that patients and care providers go, despite multiple hurdles, to receive and deliver treatment with botanical cannabis that relieves diverse symptoms and improves health-related quality-of-life.

Keywords:

• botanical geography
• cannabinoid medicine
• complementary and alternative medicine
• human-plant relationship
• medical cannabis
• medical geography
• self-rated health

Notes

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship under Grant No. DGE-0718124. Dr. Ethan Russo is acknowledged as a member of SKA's doctoral supervisory committee, where this work was originally overseen.

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

1. Reported THC content, 17% by weight, and CBD, 0.8% by weight, with no data available on terpenoid profile. Measurements done by HPLC. This data was presented at the 2012 International Cannabinoid Research Society Meeting in Freiburg, Germany, in July 2012 by cannabinoid researcher Michelle Sexton, N.D., and was based on average results from three samples of Plum cannabis flowers collected in greater Seattle, Washington, in 2011–2012.