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Vet Wants to Legalize Pot for Dogs

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Should marijuana be legal for dogs? (Image credit: Joop Snijder Jr. | Shutterstock)

Polls show the majority of Americans support legalizing marijuana, but should dogs have it too? It sounds crackpot, but Veterinarian Doug Kramer thinks that the THC in marijuana could help dogs and other pets with painful conditions that don't respond to other treatments. VICE chatted with Kramer about his pot-for-pets campaign.

"A client first brought it to my attention," Kramer told VICE. "She had a pet that was not responding well to any of the pain medications or the steroids that we were giving it, and she wanted to talk about getting medical marijuana."

Some vets dismissed the idea, but Kramer was open to trying it. He gave it to his dog Nikita, who had untreatable cancer, to increase her quality of life. And he gives it to cats too. But blowing smoke in your pet's face for fun isn't cool, he said.

Read More at VICE.com.

Tanya Lewis
Tanya Lewis
Staff Writer
Tanya was a staff writer for Live Science from 2013 to 2015, covering a wide array of topics, ranging from neuroscience to robotics to strange/cute animals. She received a graduate certificate in science communication from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a bachelor of science in biomedical engineering from Brown University. She has previously written for Science News, Wired, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the radio show Big Picture Science and other places. Tanya has lived on a tropical island, witnessed volcanic eruptions and flown in zero gravity (without losing her lunch!). To find out what her latest project is, you can visit her website.