Christine Jordan Sexton
Get ready for reefer madness on Wednesday, Feb. 18.
That’s when members of the state’s two physician licensing boards begin working on the practice standards Florida-licensed physicians must follow when ordering smokable medical marijuana for their qualified patients. The Board of Medicine and the Board of Osteopathic Medicine are required to have the rules adopted by July 1.
As members of the boards, meeting collectively as the Joint Committee on Medical Marijuana (not kidding), begin working on rules laying out when smoking is acceptable, they will be reviewing the findings of a new state report that shows smoking medical marijuana is popular among patients who qualify.
A new Department of Health report shows that 584,227 certifications for smoking were issued to 400,892 patients between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sept. 30, 2020. The report, published annually by the state, is compiled of data collected by the Florida Department of Health’s Office of Medical Marijuana Use.
The report also shows that the average amount of smokable marijuana physicians certified during the 12-month period was 2.46 ounces, slightly higher than the 2.4 ounces that physicians certified between March 18, 2019 — when smoking became a legal route of administration — and Sept. 30, 2019.
Post-traumatic stress disorder continues to be the most common condition of patients who have certifications for smokable medical marijuana, accounting for 37.5% of the certifications.
Physicians aren’t the only ones getting into the medical marijuana weeds on Wednesday, however.
The House Professions & Public Health Subcommittee will hear from Bertha Madras, a Harvard Medical School professor of psychobiology who will discuss the negative effects of high-potency marijuana.
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Republished with permission of The News Service of Florida.
6 comments
Sonja Fitch
February 14, 2021 at 5:31 am
The bestest madness ever.
Charlotte Greenbarg
February 14, 2021 at 8:40 am
Ah Ha, that’s what’s wrong with Fitch. Too much pot addled the brain. If the bots have brains, that is.
Patty duncan
February 14, 2021 at 2:43 pm
They need to make it legal, it helps me with a lot of things that I have wrong with me and I don’t want pain pills they don’t help me at all.
Robert R Sands
February 14, 2021 at 7:12 pm
@greenburg; so what’s wrong with you, charlotte? Or does it just come natural for you to be just another right-wing Trump lover paid by the GOP to make your dumbass comments, you troll! You are out numbered and thank god, always will be! Stereotype much?
SkipinSC
February 14, 2021 at 8:11 pm
I am 67 and suffer from shoulder pain on both sides. For me to have surgery to correct my issues, because it may not be covered by Medicare would be debilitating (at leeast 1 year) and prohibitively expensive. I use weed to mitigate that pain rather than onions or muscle relaxers which put me to sleep. I do not need high potency weed just something to take the edge off my pain.
Renee C Kiah
February 19, 2021 at 12:01 am
I am a PTSD patient, I am not trying to play on anyone’s heart strings….I only know how to tell the truth….after the loss of a child 20 years ago, I suffered a mental and physical breakdown….having been on every medication out there, hospitalized twice for ECT treatments, on a depression medication that costs me $786 a month for 30 days….I am a widow on disability at 59, I have climbed out of the depths of hell by my fingernails….I have not given up the fight to have a better life, I am not satisfied….marijuana gives me a better quality of life…a life that has struck me with mental illness,…a brain that went on overload, Senatobia couldn’t keep up and the mind totally shortcircuited….please hear my cry for life…
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