Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Sam.
Medical Marijuana Card Certification Center of Arizona was founded by a Dr. Sam, a holistic primary care doctor who was working in an internal medicine office. He was seeing 20-30 patients per day and was routinely prescribing, as part of the full standard of care, opiates and benzodiazepines. The patients who were prescribed these medications were often the most stressful part of every day.
As a result of these concerns, Dr. Sam started exploring options. He moonlighted in Medical Marijuana certification centers briefly. There he discovered 3 things.
Medical marijuana patients do not generally exhibit “addict” behavior. They are typically well educated, engaged in their own health, and wanting to avoid drug therapy. In fact, Dr. Sam saw more opiate and benzodiazepine dose reduction and cessation with medical marijuana than he had ever seen in 10 years of practice.
Medical marijuana is remarkably effective in reducing symptoms and disease process for the vast majority of the patients who have qualifying conditions, and even for many conditions that are not approved, such as insomnia.
Certification centers are not an ideal place to help patients who qualify for medical marijuana. Because these patients are often outside the medical model, they are best served if they are given the opportunity to develop real therapeutic relationships with holistic minded primary care doctors.
Dr. Sam already had experience managing clinics for his company Holistic Practice Management, and new he could do a better job of meeting patient needs than the clinics out there.
As a result of these experiences, Ds. Sam opened Medical Marijuana Card Certification Center of Arizona for two reasons:
– To facilitate legitimate patients who qualify for medical marijuana getting convenient access to the medicine that will cause the least harm and do the most good.
– To make sure that these patients get real care from a real doctor who cares, not just a certification.
Has it been a smooth road?
There have been many changes, most of them having to do with us changing our process to meet requirements set by the Arizona Department of Health Services and the Medical Boards.
Basically, we don’t want to put patients or doctors at risk, so we follow all the rules, but the rules are interpreted strangely at times. I could give you examples.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Medical Marijuana Card Arizona story. Tell us more about the business.
Really, I’m proud of the systems I have created to make it easy for patients, easy for Doctors, and easy for the receptionists and managers to feel good about their experiences. I read a book called Flow, and I realized that work is one of the most important places for feeling accomplishment and the rhythm of the workflow has a lot to do with whether you ever get into a state of achievement at work.
I’m proud of the quality doctors and our rock star staff. Everyone cares.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
So many ways are possible. Likely is recreational everywhere. What I am hoping for is parallel recreational AND medical. Patients who use it daily as a medicine for legitimate health concerns should not be taxed and penalized legally the same way a college student driving intoxicated after binge-smoking at a party would be.
Contact Info:
- Address: Many locations around the valley, but you can use this one:
Tempe Certification Doctors: 2600 E Southern Ave Suite G Tempe, AZ 85282 - Website: Medical MarijuanaCardArizona.org
- Phone: 480-378-8530
- Email: contact@MMjCCC.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/medicalmjcardcertificationarizona/
- Twitter: twitter.com/MedMarijCardAz

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