Since the use of medical marijuana was approved in 2016, physicians, patients and their loved ones have touted the once-illegal drug as something of a miracle treatment for numerous illness.

“The more you look into it, you have to think to yourself, ‘This is too good to be true,'” said Altoona doctor Lawrence Levinson. “But it’s not.”

That’s a notion that anti-addiction advocates would argue, claiming medical marijuana is a myth meant to normalize the drug with hopes of recreational legalization.

That point was made clear by Judy Rosser, executive director of Blair Drug and Alcohol Partner­ships, who quoted a leading pro-marijuana advocate, saying, “We will use (medical marijuana) as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.”

It’s that idea that Rosser is working to combat as she continues to spread word that marijuana is a gateway drug with the potential to lead users toward more dangerous substances.

Already, Rosser said she has seen normalization take hold. That is true in part because of consistent local, state and national media coverage of marijuana, its recreational legalization and its health benefits, she said.

Recreational marijuana is already a reality in nine states, as well as Washing­ton, D.C.

Pennsylvania’s Medical Marijuana Program was signed into law April 17, 2016, allowing state residents suffering from a list of now 21 “serious medical conditions” to obtain a certification card, which can be used to purchase the drug from licensed dispensaries.

That legitimization is what concerns Rosser and her peers.

“If perception of harm goes down, use will go up,” she said.

Rosser pointed to statistics from the 2016-17 period to back her claim. The data, she said, shows that adolescents treated by her program favored marijuana to alcohol at a rate of 3-1.

“Marijuana was their drug of choice coming into treatment,” she said.

And teens in peer groups with one or more friends who use marijuana are much more likely to try the drug themselves, Rosser said.

Fred Oliveros, assistant administrator with Cam­bria County’s Drug & Alcohol Program, also was able to speak about the proliferation of marijuana use.

“Nearly everyone who comes to our program to seek help for substance issues identifies alcohol or marijuana as the substance they first used,” Oliveros said.

Many times, a first encounter with marijuana can come as young as 12 years old, he said.

By the time they seek help, however, a patient’s addiction has often gone beyond alcohol and marijuana use to the abuse of hard drugs, such as opiates like heroin.

The claim that marijuana is a gateway drug is one that has been challenged by advocates of its medical use, including Levinson.

Inside Levinson’s Pinecroft office, burning incense wafted scented smoke past statues of an elephant and a peacock. A wooden Mayan calendar hung on a wall opposite a colorful portrait of Albert Einstein.

Levinson used equally colorful language to dismiss the gateway drug claim, calling it “an ounce of truth embedded in a pound of bull.”

Levinson is one of about 3,000 addiction medical specialists certified by the American Board of Addiction Medicine and has practiced internal medicine for 32 years.

He also has approval from the state to certify Pennsylvania residents for medical marijuana use.

Since the early 2000s, he has worked to prescribe Suboxone — a medication used to treat opiate drug addiction.

Often, sufferers of chronic pain are prescribed opioid drugs to manage their symptoms. The problem is that opioid painkillers are highly addictive, requiring the use of medications like Suboxone to help wean them off of the drugs.

Now, marijuana may be used to do the same, Levinson said.

“We have a group of people, who are mature, who have real problems over a period of time and are looking for alternatives,” he said.

Levinson said the average age of his patients is 58, and many of them have been suffering with chronic pain for decades.

That pain is the underlying cause of their addiction, and, as marijuana is used to treat that pain, there are often other positive effects — namely better sleep, which attributes to im­prove­ments in mood and depression and, eventually, the disappearance of opioid de­pendencies, Levinson said.

Levinson was not immediately convinced that marijuana would be as effective as he was told, so he asked his patients to share information about their experiences with the drug.

“I want to make sure I’m not doling out snake oil,” Levinson said.

In some cases, patients with pain so severe that they were prescribed powerful opioids, such as fentanyl patches and morphine pumps, were looking to abandon those medications solely for marijuana, he said.

“I said, ‘Whoa, hold off,'” Levinson said, explaining that he eventually relented and those patients are now thriving under their medical marijuana use.

Ron Boyles of Bald Eagle is able to back that claim with firsthand experience.

Boyles, who suffered a back injury in 1999, has been dealing with pain management issues for decades.

During a recent conversation, he remembered the seemingly countless doctors visits he endured and the dozens of medications, including opiates, he was prescribed.

Then he discovered marijuana, and now he is opiate-free.

“It helped me immediately,” he said. “I’ve taken 10 Advil in the last three-and-a- half years. That’s it.”

Levinson admitted the same approach would not be approved for someone whose addiction is rooted in recreational use.

Medical applications of marijuana can’t be ignored, Oliveros said, but that doesn’t mean recreational abuse will disappear.

With that in mind, the goal of Cambria County’s anti-drug program will be to educate the public, especially children and teens, about the difference between medical and recreational marijuana use.

“That’s the first step in people even forming an opinion,” Oliveros said, referring to views on the validity of marijuana as medicine.

The way that information will be distributed remained unknown as of mid-July, when Oliveros said the details were still being worked out.

“There is not a lot of programing on it right now,” he said. “This is obviously something that is an up and coming topic of interest.”

Mirror Staff Writer Sean Sauro is at 946-7535.