The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation’s largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way to conduct clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

“Despite more than 30 years of clinical research, only a small number of randomized, controlled trials have been conducted on smoked cannabis,” said Dr. Edward Langston, an AMA board member, noting that the limited number of studies was “insufficient to satisfy the current standards for a prescription drug product.”

This is a new position for the AMA and they do not directly advocate the use of medical marijuana directly. However they are in favor of more research on the benefits of medical marijuana. This is great news for medical marijuana advocates. The reason is that good quality clinical research has been hampered because of harsh drug laws in our country.

Because of the fact that the Obama administration has adopted a more relaxed policy toward medical marijuana, patients, caregivers and growers are not being prosecuted as often as they may have been in the past. It is still important to realize that even though states have relaxed or made “legal” medical marijuana, the federal law hasn’t changed. These laws are still severe and for now have simply had the enforcement of them altered. The hope of us all is that with the increasing number of voices advocating this change, which now includes the AMA, we will eventually be heard and recognized.

An interesting aspect of the AMA’s change in policy is that it fits in with a larger shift in the organization’s positions. Traditionally, the positions of the AMA have been on balance fairly politically conservative. However, this year, for example, the AMA has come out in favor of sweeping health care reform–despite its many years of trying to block similar reforms. This brings the position of the AMA more in line with the views of the physicians it represents. Arguably the most definitive survey on this subject to date (published last month in The New England Journal of Medicine) found that 72.5% of physicians support a public health care option (either or alone or with private options as well, the latter being by far the most popular view).