Urge your state legislators to stand up for patients!

Last year, the Alabama Senate overwhelmingly approved the Compassion Act — which would have legalized medical cannabis — but it stalled in the House when the coronavirus derailed the legislative session.

This year, Sen. Tim Melson, MD, has already filed the 2021 version of the bill, SB 46. State lawmakers return to work on Tuesday. Let’s make sure they come back knowing their constituents want the Compassion Act to be at the top of their agenda!

It takes less than a minute to send your lawmakers an email through our automated system. You can personalize the message or rewrite it.

Alabama’s lack of medical marijuana protections is increasingly an outlier. Thirty-six states, including Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi, allow medical cannabis, and polling shows 75% of Alabama voters support it.

While SB 46 is far better than the status quo, we are also encouraging lawmakers to make some improvements. The bill currently steers intractable pain patients to try opiates first, even though they are far more dangerous than cannabis. It also puts onerous burdens on physicians that will depress participation.

Please write your lawmakers today to urge them to improve and enact SB 46, and then spread the word to other compassionate Alabamians.

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Cannabis hospitality, delivery, and other improvements are coming soon!

Great news! In the past week, Gov. Jared Polis (D) has signed several bills to improve Colorado's cannabis laws — including to allow delivery and hospitality (cannabis cafés), to make investment easier, and to allow patients to use medical cannabis for anything a prescription opiate could be prescribed for.

The new laws include:

• HB 1234, which will allow home delivery in cities and counties that allow it. Medical cannabis deliveries can begin as soon as January 2, 2020, and deliveries to adult consumers can start in January 2021;
• HB 1230, which allows businesses like hotels or restaurants to set aside a location for patrons to consume cannabis — also in cities and counties that opt in. It will also allow licensed retail locations to sell small amounts of cannabis for use on-site;
• HB 1090, which allows publicly traded companies to invest capital in cannabis businesses; and
• SB 13, which allows patients to register to use medical cannabis (which is taxed at a much lower rate than adult-use cannabis) for any condition for which they could be prescribed prescription opiates. It also makes it easier for minor patients to qualify, by allowing any kind of physician (rather than just certain specialists) to sign their certification.

Colorado continues as a leader in cannabis policy, and these new laws are yet another step forward. Our hearty appreciation to the bill sponsors, governor, and all those who worked to get these measures through a difficult process!

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Earlier this year, the Hawaii Legislature overwhelmingly approved SB 2407, which would allow opioid and substance use disorders, and their symptoms, to be treated with medical cannabis if a physician recommends it. But last week, Gov. David Ige announced he intends to veto this compassionate bill.

Medical cannabis can ease the devastating symptoms of opiate withdrawal and make it easier for individuals to stay on treatment regimens. For some, this is an issue of life or death.

The governor has until July 10 to act on the bill. If you are a resident of Hawaii, please call Gov. Ige at 808-586-0034 or send him an email to urge him to reconsider. We’ve provided some talking points and a draft email message to make the process easy.

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An important medical marijuana bill emerged from the Senate yesterday that could bring welcome relief to seriously ill patients around the state. Senate Bill 336 would allow patients who qualify for opioid prescriptions to enroll in the state’s medical cannabis program. SB 336, sponsored in the Senate by Sens. Don Harmon and Chris Nybo, emerged with a strong 44-6 vote in support. The bill is now in the House.

Seriously ill patients should not be pushed towards some of the most harmful drugs available, particularly when there is a safer alternative. Studies in recent years have supported what many medical marijuana patients already know: medical cannabis can be an effective alternative for patients who might otherwise rely on opioid drugs.

Sen. Harmon’s bill would not only provide that alternative, it would also make other critically important improvements to the state program, including removing the current fingerprint requirement for all patients. Rep. Kelly Cassidy has already stepped in as chief co-sponsor in the House, along with over two dozen other House members who have joined with her as co-sponsors. But it’s crunch time in Springfield, and lawmakers are now working through the busiest time of the year — it’s important the bill continue to advance without delay.

If you are an Illinois resident, please ask your representatives to support this bill and to consider co-sponsoring if they haven’t signed on already.

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I remember one of the clients I had on internship. He’d been drinking a fifth of bourbon a day for years. As you’d guess, his liver was a mess, and his thinking was clearly impaired. I couldn’t help but wonder how much better his health would have been (and how much money he could have saved) if he’d used cannabis instead. Of course, if I’d suggested that he switch to a safer drug, my supervisor would have berated me so loudly that everyone in the clinic would have had to cover his ears. There was little evidence to support this practice, no matter how much I thought it might help.

Although the idea remains controversial, substituting cannabis for drugs that cause more harm has a ton of advantages. It can certainly be cheaper, easier on the body, and less impairing. Harvard professor Lester Grinspoon mentioned this idea decades ago. I must get two e-mails a week from people who swear by the practice, but individual cases hardly count as compelling evidence. Fortunately, real people with real problems do everything that they can to tackle their troubles, no matter what the published research might say.

Years after I left internship, Dr. Amanda Reiman showed that many patrons of the Berkeley Patients’ Group used the plant to decrease or stop their consumption of other substances. The obvious next step would be a randomized clinical trial. Folks with drug problems would be randomly assigned to receive treatment as usual or to use cannabis exclusively instead. We’d follow up with them later and see how they were doing. Then we’d know if the treatment was helpful. It would take some money to give them the treatment they needed, but no matter how the experiment turned out, we’d know something very valuable.

If I’d called the National Institute of Health to pitch this idea, they’d probably have laughed their heads off. They’d have said that everybody knows that you can’t treat alcoholism with cannabis. I’d have mentioned Dr. Reiman’s study. They would have said that it was just one sample, and they were all from the same place, so no dice.

For this reason, we wanted to know if more medical cannabis patients made comparable claims. My esteemed colleagues contacted over 400 medical cannabis patients who were patrons of four different dispensaries in British Columbia. (I was just the data monkey on this project. Once New York state becomes more enlightened about medical cannabis, I’ll be more help.) Over 75% of these folks said that they used cannabis in place of some other drug. Replacing prescription drugs was the most common practice (68%), but many used the plant instead of alcohol (41%) and illicit drugs (36%). (Participants could report more than one drug for substitution, so the totals don’t equal 100%.)

We now have literally hundreds of people reporting that they can use cannabis instead of drugs that cause more harm. People who use alcohol or other drugs problematically often balk at treatments that demand complete abstinence. Who might show up for treatment if patients knew that they could use cannabis as part of the program? Maybe they’d run into trouble with the plant. But maybe they’d have healthy, productive, fun lives. They’d certainly have fewer problems if they laid off stimulants, alcohol, or opiates. So, how about it? What will it take to get a harm reduction program going where folks can use cannabis instead of hard drugs? I hate to think that the world might never know.

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