Update: The 2017 legislative session came to a close with lawmakers taking no further action A 8598.
Update: On July 10, A. 8598 was referred to committee.
Legislation is pending in the Assembly, A. 8598, to expand the pool of patients eligible for medical cannabis therapy.
The measure eliminates the state’s limiting list of qualifying conditions. Rather, it leaves the decision of whether to recommend medical cannabis entirely up to the discretion of each individual physician.
It states, “[M]edical marihuana may be used for a condition, or symptom or complication of the condition or its treatment, for which, in the practitioner’s professional opinion and review of past treatments, the patient is likely to receive therapeutic or palliative benefit from primary or adjunctive treatment.”
Physicians already possess similar discretion when it comes to prescribing pharmaceutical drugs that pose far greater health risks than cannabis. Politicians should not be arbitrarily interfering in this doctor/patient relationship.
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