A conference on the medicinal uses of marijuana, the first of its kind, will be held at the University of Iowa next month.

The National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics, a conference dedicated to educating health-care professionals on the use of marijuana as medicine, will take place April 6-8 at the Iowa Memorial Union in Iowa City.

The conference will be jointly sponsored by the College of Nursing and the College of Medicine at the University of Iowa, in cooperation with Patients Out of Time, a nonprofit organization that aims to educate people about the medicinal benefits of marijuana.

Melanie Dreher, dean of the University of Iowa nursing school, said the university was chosen as the site of the conference for many reasons.

“Several professors and researchers here have written a book on medical marijuana uses,” she said. “They have contacts with several people who are legally using marijuana for medicinal reasons.”

She also said the U of I is a good place to have the conference because it is has a “preeminent medical campus,” and it is a central location in the country.

Another reason to have the conference in Iowa is because half of the people who legally use medicinal marijuana live in the state.

“Of the eight people in the country who legally use marijuana for medical purposes, four of them live in Iowa,” she said.

According to an informational brochure released by the University of Iowa College of Nursing, more than 25 presenters and hosts are scheduled to be at the conference. They include professors, researchers and health-care professionals from across the country, as well as cannabis-using patients and their relatives.

Topics that will be discussed include the history of medicinal marijuana use, examples of therapeutic uses of cannabis and the possible health risks associated with those uses, according to the information from the U of I College of Nursing.

Speakers scheduled to discuss the medicinal benefits of marijuana will include founders and members of Patients Out of Time and five current cannabis patients.

Robert Block, associate professor of anesthesia at the U of I, will be among the lecturers talking about the potential health risks of medicinal marijuana.

Block said he has conducted research that shows frequent marijuana use can cause impairments in cognitive abilities.

“I have done studies on people who have used marijuana frequently for a period of years,” he said, “and I’ve found that it can have adverse effects, including impaired brain function.”

Block said he will not be speaking at the conference against the use of medicinal marijuana.

“I will just be talking about some of the adverse effects of it,” he said. “Most drugs that are prescribed have a certain amount of adverse effects, and marijuana has them as well.”

Block said certain ingredients in marijuana do have beneficial effects, and it may be possible to create a medication containing related chemicals that might have similar effects, allowing patients to consume the chemicals without smoking marijuana.

Dreher said the conference is a response to a recent 18-month study on medicinal marijuana conducted by the National Institute of Medicine, which found cannabis to have definite medicinal benefits.