Letters To My Country

July 8, 2014

Everything Wrong With Andrew Cuomo's Medical Marijuana Law

A letter signed by New York Physicians for Compassion Care cites five different studies referencing the lack of association between cancer and chronic marijuana smoking, and points out that forcing patients to vaporize marijuana extracts “may leave out therapeutically important” chemical compounds for patients. Ingesting edible marijuana, as Maureen Dowd will tell you, ”may be too potent for some patients to tolerate, compared to the whole plant botanical material.”
Americans For Safe Access, which gave New York’s medical marijuana law a grade of F+ [PDF], adds that by forcing patients to buy expensive vaporizers and proprietary marijuana solutions, the law creates a “prohibitive cost for many patients who cannot afford to purchase what would otherwise be an inexpensive medicine to grow.”

LTMC: The bill is a joke. As suggested above, the bill prohibits doctors from prescribing marijuana in smoking form, meaning that patients will have to pay beaucoup dollars to pharmaceutical companies to get the “proprietary marijuana solutions.” Many of the people who could benefit from medicinal marijuana will not be able to access it because of the secondary costs associated with procuring and utilizing the legally prescribable forms of the drug. Patients can also expect to fill out paperwork for insurance companies that almost certainly won’t cover the “proprietary marijuana solutions” or the machines needed to use it without a prior authorization, which will deter doctors from suggesting it, and patients from asking for it.

8:27pm | URL: https://tmblr.co/ZMMjnx1Kxzcl1

(Notes: 34)