Cannabis Businesses & Professionals United for National Medical Cannabis Q &A

Action Groups are teams of colleagues and peers who organize around ASA campaigns without creating a new chapter or organization. They bring stakeholders together to support ASA’s national advocacy and policy work.
More on ASA Action Groups: Working with ASA safeaccessnow.org

Founding members saw a gap: medical cannabis policy conversations were being drowned out, medical programs were sidelined by adult-use, and patients were losing access. ASA has led the fight since 2002 and already has the expertise and infrastructure; what was missing were resources and amplification. UNMC formed as an action group to strengthen ASA directly, rather than duplicating efforts.

Founded in 2002, Americans for Safe Access is the largest national member-based organization of patients, medical professionals, scientists, and allies promoting safe and legal access to cannabis for therapeutic use and research. ASA’s work helped create the very medical cannabis marketplace we know today — from passing the CJS amendment, to establishing patient safety standards, to leading international reforms at WHO and the UN. Learn more about ASA.  

Operators, professionals, healthcare providers, insurers, attorneys, investors, and anyone committed to ensuring medical cannabis has a permanent home in U.S. healthcare.

No. UNMC is open to everyone. However, ASA Action Groups require a minimum number of members each year. ASA offers special benefits for Action Group members who also support as monthly donors or sponsors.

UNMC members:

• Engage in the LinkedIn community
• Mobilize networks to support ASA campaigns
• Invest in ASA’s advocacy through monthly support
• Amplify patient voices through media, op-eds, and policy engagement

UNMC is primarily coordinated through its LinkedIn Group. 

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The federal government is not poised to legalize cannabis for adult use anytime soon — and medical cannabis policy needs to evolve to continue serving patients. Legalization alone doesn’t guarantee access, quality, or protection. In fact, in many states, medical programs are collapsing as adult-use expands. Patients require a dedicated federal framework that prioritizes their health and rights.

No. The MCCA creates a path for medical cannabis that complements, rather than competes with, adult-use reforms.

Rescheduling cannabis to Schedule III is progress, but it doesn’t solve the bigger problem: cannabis is a complex botanical medicine that doesn’t fit neatly into the single-compound pharmaceutical model. That’s why ASA and UNMC support the creation of a new Schedule VI and a dedicated Office of Medical Cannabis & Cannabinoid Control (OMC).

Here’s why rescheduling won’t automatically lead to a Big Pharma takeover:

• Complexity of Cannabis: The medicinal benefits of cannabis come from multiple active compounds interacting with the body’s endocannabinoid system. This makes it difficult for pharmaceutical companies to reduce cannabis to a single, patentable pill.
• Multi-Target Relief: Patients often benefit from the “entourage effect” — the synergy of 140+ cannabinoids, terpenes, and flavonoids that full-spectrum cannabis provides. This multi-target action is hard to replicate with a single compound.
• History of Limited Pharma Success: Products like Epidiolex, Marinol, and Cesamet have had limited commercial success. Only 10–20% of drugs approved for clinical trials ever make it to market, which makes Big Pharma less likely to invest heavily in cannabis “pharmaceuticalization.”
• Experience Abroad: Whole-plant cannabis has been available in European pharmacies since 2003, and it did not result in pharmaceutical companies taking over those markets.
• What Patients Really Need: Without comprehensive federal legislation, rescheduling still leaves patients facing barriers like inconsistent safety standards, patchwork state laws, lack of insurance coverage, and discrimination in housing, employment, and healthcare.

Rescheduling alone does not meet patient needs — nor does it incentivize Big Pharma to dominate medical cannabis. The real solution is comprehensive federal legislation, like the MCCA, that secures safe access, integrates cannabis into healthcare, and protects patients while creating a stable national framework.

Only federal action can end the patchwork system, ensure uniform safety standards, protect patients across all states, and integrate cannabis into U.S. healthcare.

First, this would require first descheduling, which is not likely to occur anytime soon, and Cannabis is medicine — and regulating it like a dietary supplement would undermine the opportunity to fully integrate it into U.S. healthcare. Dietary supplements are not subject to the testing, dosage information for efficacy, and consistency that patients and medical professionals expect from treatments.

Here’s why the supplement pathway doesn’t work for cannabis:

• Lack of Safety Oversight: Supplements are not required to undergo pre-market safety testing. Cannabis patients need standardized products with dosing they can rely on.
• No Clinical Integration: Supplements cannot be prescribed, reimbursed by insurance, or integrated into clinical care. For cannabis to function as a therapeutic option, it must be recognized and regulated as a medicine, not a wellness product.
• FDA Limitations: The FDA has already acknowledged that cannabinoids don’t fit into the existing supplement framework. Both FDA and HHS have called for a new regulatory pathway because cannabinoids interact with the body in ways supplements do not.
• Risk of Weak Standards: Treating cannabis like a supplement would leave patients vulnerable to the same problems seen in the supplement market: mislabeling and misleading health claims.
• Missed Healthcare Potential: Medical cannabis has the power to reduce healthcare costs, improve chronic disease outcomes, and provide alternatives to opioids. That requires integration into healthcare systems — something supplement rules cannot provide.

Regulating cannabis like a supplement would reduce it to a consumer product and abandon patients. The right path is a comprehensive national medical cannabis program, like the MCCA, with a new Schedule VI classification and an Office of Medical Cannabis & Cannabinoid Control to ensure cannabis is safe, effective, and accessible as medicine.