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State officials proposed that people who suffer chronic pain should be allowed to be part of the medical marijuana program.
STATES CHRONICLE – In New York, the medical marijuana program appears to be improving. Many people who suffer terrible pain due to serious diseases got a prescription to use the medicine. Karen Rodriguez is one of them. In the past, she used opioids to control her terrible pain. Unfortunately, the powerful drugs and the chemotherapy medication have damaged her liver.
That was the moment when she decided she needed an alternative solution to treat her rheumatoid arthritis. The safer alternative for her was cannabis. In the spring of 2016, she became a participant in the medical marijuana program in New York state. She was declared to be eligible because she suffers from neuropathy which was linked to diabetes, and not because she experiences extreme pain.
The woman reported that she faces days when she is not even able to move or get out of bed in the morning due to her joint pain. If she were not diagnosed with neuropathy, she would not have been able to get into the medical marijuana program, receiving her membership card. Later this year, after the state Department of Health (DOH), will finalize the process of adding chronic pain as a condition for the use of medical marijuana, every New Yorker who suffers from a terrible disease with painful episodes will be allowed to use the drug without violating state regulations.
The Department of Health started the process of submitting marijuana as an alternative medicine to treat chronic pain back in December 2016. Analysts from the cannabis industry together with state officials have agreed on providing access to the drug for thousands of chronic pain suffers, including them in the medical marijuana program.
People who receive this treatment suffer from diseases like AIDS, cancer, neuropathy and other illnesses. This new qualifying condition adopted is also bound to boost the business of medical marijuana providers in New York. Based on the data revealed by Dr. Stephen Dahmer, the chief medical officer for Vireo Health, this process will allow state residents to have a safer alternative to the powerful addictive drugs which have boosted the painkiller crisis of the nation.
Dahmer also argued that it is better for patients to use medical marijuana instead of being addicted to opioids. Nevertheless, other industry executives are concerned about the DOH chronic pain proposal.
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