Dr. Sanjay Gupta Changes Mind, Says Marijuana Serves Legitimate Medicinal Purpose

Sanjay Gupta Backs Medical Marijuana, Apologizes for Previous Views (CBS News)

One of America's most prominent doctors says he has shifted his stance in support of medical marijuana.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, chief medical correspondent at CNN and a CBS News contributing medical correspondent, wrote a post today on CNN.com called, "Why I changed my mind on weed," in which he describes his change of heart that occurred while filming a documentary, aptly titled, "Weed."

"Long before I began this project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive," wrote Gupta. "Well, I am here to apologize."

Gupta says he was too dismissive of the "loud chorus" of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved with help from medical marijuana. He now says, "I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance [a category of dangerous drugs] because of sound scientific proof."

"They didn't have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true," wrote Gupta, citing patient cases including a 3-year-old whose seizures were dramatically reduced from 300 a week to three a month with medical marijuana's help.